Troubleshooting

SideScopes cannot capture the screen on macOS

Screen capture requires permission in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording. Enable SideScopes, quit it completely, and reopen it. The application reports a missing permission rather than presenting empty traces.

If the setting is enabled but capture remains unavailable, macOS may hold a stale permission entry after the application was replaced with a differently signed build. Reset the entry in Terminal, then reopen SideScopes and grant the permission again:

tccutil reset ScreenCapture org.sidescopes.app

Remove duplicate copies of SideScopes when diagnosing this problem. Copies share the same application identifier, and macOS may open a different one than the copy you changed.

Windows does not require a separate screen-capture permission.

Screen capture was interrupted

Display sleep, screen locking, disconnection, or a display-configuration change can end the capture stream. SideScopes clears the live trace, reports the interruption, and attempts to reconnect when the display becomes available. It does not retain a stale frame as a current reading.

The interface is too small or too large

Choose Settings → General → Interface size. Values from 50% to 200% multiply the scale reported by the operating system. At the default setting, SideScopes follows the display density as its window moves between displays.

Resetting application preferences

Close Settings and remove its preferences file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/SideScopes/preferences.conf
• Windows: %APPDATA%\SideScopes\preferences.conf

Settings reads defaults when the file is absent and creates a file when you change a preference. The main app only reads this file. To reset working state or saved layouts instead, quit the main app and remove state.conf or presets.conf from the same directory.

Diagnostics → Disable is unrelated to application preferences. It stops diagnostic recording and restores the normal screen-capture visibility setting.

Recording a diagnostic log

Choose Diagnostics → Record Diagnostic Log before reproducing a problem. SideScopes writes timestamped state and event lines to sidescopes/sidescopes-diag.log inside the system temporary directory. Choose Show Diagnostic Log to open the folder. Choose Diagnostics → Disable after reproducing the problem to stop recording and restore the standard diagnostic state.

The log records window titles and application names. Review it before sharing. The previous recording is retained beside it as sidescopes-diag.prev.log.

On Windows, Show in Screen Captures temporarily makes SideScopes visible to capture and screenshot tools. Its windows are normally excluded so the scopes do not analyze themselves.