Upgrade StorageSafari Connector icon disappears--how to fix
I am starting this thread because another one was prematurely and unhelpfully shut down early by a moderator. I have a suggestion to improve the help page and additional info about when it happens (the connector disappears).
Like others at this thread (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/494378#Comment_494378) I occasionally have the Zotero Connector completely disappear. It isn't just that it has been turned off in Safari Extensions, it is gone. I have found the only way to get it back is to reinstall Zotero. However, the help page that is constantly pushed by the moderator dstillman is unhelpfully structured.
The solution IS listed there on that page, but not in a way a reader will spot (I didn't). The solution to the disappearing connector is indeed to reinstall Zotero. But this is found on the help page under the section 'Can’t see the save button? Save button flickering?' This section on that page needs to be relabelled as something like "Problems? Connector disappeared? Can’t see the save button? Save button flickering?"
It also does not seem (for me) to require deleting the existing app. I got it back by just dropping a new download into Applications and overwriting the old one. When run, the system recognises it is new and this seems to trigger a fix.
It would also be helpful to advise that by doing it this way open tabs seem to remain open (I had 10 open and was worried I'd lose them so I made a tag for them!).
Adding these details to that help page would make it more helpful (I'm also not sure how discoverable it is).
I can also say that this seems to happen for me specifically when Zotero is not running. I get the pop-up about Zotero not running and the option to try again. After I loaded/ran Zotero, I then clicked the Try Again button. The box disappeared, nothing else happened and then I found the connector was gone. Maybe that helps narrow down a cause.
I appreciate that the coders for Zotero find the Mac/Safari unhelpful. I have no idea why it happens (though, as one poster on the other thread asked, why do other extensions not do this). But some better pointers would reduce the frustration as the fix is not too onerous (for a Mac user this is easy as long as the download is accessible).
Like others at this thread (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/494378#Comment_494378) I occasionally have the Zotero Connector completely disappear. It isn't just that it has been turned off in Safari Extensions, it is gone. I have found the only way to get it back is to reinstall Zotero. However, the help page that is constantly pushed by the moderator dstillman is unhelpfully structured.
The solution IS listed there on that page, but not in a way a reader will spot (I didn't). The solution to the disappearing connector is indeed to reinstall Zotero. But this is found on the help page under the section 'Can’t see the save button? Save button flickering?' This section on that page needs to be relabelled as something like "Problems? Connector disappeared? Can’t see the save button? Save button flickering?"
It also does not seem (for me) to require deleting the existing app. I got it back by just dropping a new download into Applications and overwriting the old one. When run, the system recognises it is new and this seems to trigger a fix.
It would also be helpful to advise that by doing it this way open tabs seem to remain open (I had 10 open and was worried I'd lose them so I made a tag for them!).
Adding these details to that help page would make it more helpful (I'm also not sure how discoverable it is).
I can also say that this seems to happen for me specifically when Zotero is not running. I get the pop-up about Zotero not running and the option to try again. After I loaded/ran Zotero, I then clicked the Try Again button. The box disappeared, nothing else happened and then I found the connector was gone. Maybe that helps narrow down a cause.
I appreciate that the coders for Zotero find the Mac/Safari unhelpful. I have no idea why it happens (though, as one poster on the other thread asked, why do other extensions not do this). But some better pointers would reduce the frustration as the fix is not too onerous (for a Mac user this is easy as long as the download is accessible).
I closed the other thread because the first half of it was filled with a technical discussion that was confusing people. The only relevant thing here is the link that I linked to three times in the thread, and which I closed the thread with.
The section that I "constantly push" (not sure the reason for the accusatory phrasing?) explains exactly what you need to do when this happens. There are various potential symptoms here, and the button not showing up while the extension remained listed used to be the most common one. We're now seeing more of the extension disappearing from the Extensions pane altogether, so I've adjusted the heading of that section (and added a legacy anchor link so existing links continue to work). But that section — which I've always linked to directly — remains the only relevant advice. That results in a confusing prompt — with "Keep Both" — that could result in multiple copies of the app, so that's not the advice we would give. And in some cases a restart between deleting the app and reinstalling has seemed to work better for people (though it shouldn't be necessary in most cases). No, that has nothing to do with how you replaced the app. Deleting an app on a Mac never affects its data or state. Zotero just preserves tabs when you close it — that's all that is. No, it doesn't. It happens when the app is updated, and the app is updated when you next start it up after an update was downloaded in the background while it was running. That's all you were seeing.
I objected to the thread being closed because it meant that new info could not be added by anyone, such as that pointing out that the help page isn't as helpful as it could be and giving context to the problem.
OK, I accept your point that overwriting rather than deleting first will give a prompt that might confuse some. I'd expect a Mac user to be able to handle it but I can see that deleting first avoids the risk. :) And fair enough if it isn't enough for some to just overwrite it to remedy.
On the tabs issue, thanks for clarifying. I'm not sure how much I meant to say that overwriting would achieve this and deleting wouldn't. But it is helpful to know that either way Zotero retains this info (I appreciate that you can tell me that because the data is not deleted it will remain but I have had issues with other apps where I lost tabs like this and I think it is reassuring to state this explicitly; I would never personally work on the assumption that the layout of an app would be retained by deleting the app because I have been burned too often by apps losing stuff when deleted--after all this procedure resets the extension visibility in Safari).
OK, thanks for clarifying that it is the update kicking in that is causing the issue.
I am surprised you objected to what you saw as accusatory phrasing in my original post because, honestly, your reply reads as very condescending (and the original thread replies also felt this way) when I was trying to be helpful. But I appreciate that you have revised the page and clarified the issue.