Firefox Screenshots on Mac no longer upload to Sugarsync
Firefox has an excellent built-in screenshot feature that allows users to take full page screenshots of web pages. I am a Mac user. I use Sugarsync cloud service to keep my Mac Studio desktop (OS 12.6.3 Monterey) and Macbook Air (OS 13.3 Ventura) laptop in sync. I am running Firefox 133.0.
I have noticed that Firefox .png screenshots have not been uploading properly to Sugarsync for the last 6 months or so. In Finder a green tick appears which indicates that a file has been properly uploaded to SugarSync but when I go to the Sugarsync app I can see the following error message for such files "Waiting on upload from Mac Studio". This means that screenshots I take on my desktop do not go across to my laptop and vice versa.
I spoke to the very helpful tech support (Luis M, senior tech support) at Sugarsync today and he and his colleague were able to figure out that the problem has to do with the attributes of the saved .png files.
I will outline the issue in detail:
On a Mac you can examine the attributes of a file by doing the following: - right click on the folder in which your file is located and click "new terminal at folder". This opens a new terminal window - type the following: xattr -l and then drag and drop the file name from finder next to the "xattr -l" and then insert a space, a dot and a forward slash and press enter, i.e. myusername@NameOfMyComputer Foldername % xattr -l full path and file name ./
For example if I take a screenshot of the following URL: https://www.mlb.com/ and I save the screenshot in a folder I have named "Firefox Screenshots" it saves as as "Screenshot 2024-12-07 at 14-48-02 MLB.com The Official Site of Major League Baseball" on my computer. I can examine it's attributes in terminal using the steps outlined above:
myusername@NameOfMyComputer Firefox Screenshots % xattr -l /Users/myusername/Firefox\ Screenshots/Screenshot\ 2024-12-07\ at\ 14-46-28\ The\ New\ York\ Times\ -\ Breaking\ News\ US\ News\ World\ News\ and\ Videos.png ./
When I click enter it generates a massive amount of information that looks like this: /Users/myusername/Firefox Screenshots/Screenshot 2024-12-07 at 14-46-28 The New York Times - Breaking News US News World News and Videos.png: com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms: bplist00?_ /Users/myusername/Firefox Screenshots/Screenshot 2024-12-07 at 14-46-28 The New York Times - Breaking News US News World News and Videos.png: com.apple.quarantine: 0081;6753c517;Firefox;0F67116D-C970-45CB-A578-65EAFC93F6DD myusername@NameOfMyComputer Firefox Screenshots % xattr -l /Users/myusername/Firefox\ Screenshots/Screenshot\ 2024-12-07\ at\ 14-48-02\ MLB.com\ The\ Official\ Site\ of\ Major\ League\ Baseball.png ./ /Users/myusername/Firefox Screenshots/Screenshot 2024-12-07 at 14-48-02 MLB.com The Official Site of Major League Baseball.png: com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms: bplist00?_Q?^data:image/png;base64,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 etc etc etc
The total output is over 19 million characters long due to the long alphabet soup that is generated. And this why Sugarsync is unable to properly upload the file.
You can retrospectively fix folders that contain .png files that will not properly upload to Sugarsync by right clicking on a folder, selecting "new terminal at folder" and typing the following: xattr -d -r com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms ./
This fixes the attributes and the .png screenshots files immediately start to upload to Sugarsync. When you examine the attributes of the file again it shows the following:
/Users/myusername/Firefox Screenshots/Screenshot 2024-12-07 at 14-48-02 MLB.com The Official Site of Major League Baseball.png: com.apple.quarantine: 0081;6753c575;Firefox;D5072DFA-9EE8-4EF1-9658-86263462F1CD.
Could the Firefox developers please look at this issue and liaise with Sugarsync?
Many thanks in advance.
All Replies (5)
This part --
com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms: bplist00?_Q?^data:image/png;base64,[encoded image data]
-- is standard for downloads on MacOS and typically would have the download source URL (+ the referring page URL, if applicable) according to the source.
In the case of a screenshot, one would hope that would be the URL of the page you are capturing, but I guess what is getting saved is not the page address but a data URL consisting of an encoded version of the actual screenshot?? That's not helpful (it's completely redundant with the image itself).
In doing some searches about this, I found a patch (bug 1432915 in Firefox 59) that stopped the source URL from being saved for private window downloads. Can you test to see whether a private window screenshot is missing the "kMDItemWhereFroms" field?
(Obviously, it would be inconvenient to save all screenshots from private windows, so this is just to gather data.)
If so, then the relevant bug/request is probably this older one "Allow user control for kMDItemWhereFroms xattr metadata writing on downloads in macOS" (bug 1374027) which would provide user choice for regular window downloads on Mac.
That has not been active in recent years, so it probably makes sense to file something specific to screenshots. I might do that later tonight, but let me know about the private window.
Dear jscher2000,
Thanks so much for taking the time to look at my post!
I can confirm that the issue is identical whether I take a screenshot in normal mode or in Private Browsing mode.
Looking at the attributes of the files, the "kMDItemWhereFroms" field is still there in the private browsing version of the screenshot.
Kind regards, Rohan.
That's strange. But as a Windows user, there's only so much testing I can do myself. Hopefully someone will look favorably on the bug report.
Sincerely appreciated. This hasn't been reported to Sugarsync before but I don't know how many of their users are using Mac and Firefox and use the screenshot feature. I use the feature a lot and didn't notice the failure to sync those files for several months!
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