Fast App Switching Support

Hi,
Since iOS 4+, apps now support Fast Switching, that is, when the application is closed it saves its memory contents and goes to background so that when the user taps the application again it resumes in the same state as it was when it was closed.
Adding Fast App Switching Support to existing Cocoa Applications is as simple as recompiling the code for the new SDK. I wonder if there's any way to implement this by using the PFI.

For a long time I assumed it wouldn't work, because when I switched away from my app it always restarted when I switched back. But then later I realized I was calling the application exit function on deactivate. Haven't had time to prove one way or another whether it can work.
I did try messing with shareobjects as a way to reinstate things, but that wasn't too successful.
Anyway, it should be something you can easily test.

Similar Messages

IOS fast app switching

I'm not sure if this issue is simply an IOS bug or something related to certain programs. That being said, after launching some programs for the first time (after reboot of iPad) and configuring it the way I like, most of the time when relaunching the app it will utilize the fast app switching feature of IOS and retain my customizations/views without having to reload the program in it's entirety. However after a period of time whether it be overnight or a few hours later when I relaunch the app it will completely reload the app - splash screen and all and force me to again customize my views. As often as I use these programs it becomes annoying. I was thinking that perhaps this was a bug in IOS 5.01 however after upgrading to 5.1 the behavior still exists.
I apprecaite any help!

This is likely one of 2 things... Either the developer hasn't coded it properly to work, or you are running up against a RAM wall. How many apps are you running at a time, and how many tabs do you have open in safari?

IPad fast app switcher slow to bring up. What should I do?

When I double tap the home button on my iPad, the fast app switcher is slow to bring up. What should I do to?

Try the following:
1. Close all inactive apps in the Task Bar. Double-click the Home button and hold apps down for a second or two and tap the minus sign to close app.
2. Try a reset. Hold the Sleep and Home button down for about 10 seconds until you see the Apple Logo

Can't kill apps using fast app switcher....help!

can't kill app using fast app switcher...help ?

Only a very few specifically designed Apps actually run in the background. Apps such as Music, turn by turn GPS etc. others are suspended when you push the home button or switch to a different App.
Stedman

Add "Fast App Switching" to AssistiveTouch

Can "Fast App Switching" be added to AssistiveTouch. I have a hard time double-clicking the home button. It would be nice if it was included right next to Home on the menu.

Sorry, when I say "right next to Home", I mean right next to Home on the AssistiveTouch main popup menu.
Thank you

No Fast User Switching Support for Windows XP ?????

I just got off the phone with Apple support and they confirmed that the iPod Nano and iTunes do not support fast user switching. What kind of joke is this?
Has anyone found a work around for this, having everyone log off so I can update my ipod is not an options!!!!
This is my first (and maybe last) Apple product.
iPod Nano Windows XP Fast User Switching

Actually it is a big problem, because I share the PC with my parents (who each log into their own account.) I would need to login to both of their accounts (and I don't have their passwords) exit all their open programs and then log them out. So not only does it take a while, they will kill me if I start doing that on a regular basis.
I cannot believe that iTunes doesn't work with multiple users logged in, every other program we have works properly this way. I have several friends who use their XP system in the same way with other family members.
This is really lame.
Does iTunes work this way with OS X?

When I double click Home button, all of my apps don't show in the bar -- only the four that reside there. Did a reset last night to fix the Home button (it sort of works now) but now this. Any ideas on why I can't do the fast app switch now?

When I double click Home button to change apps quickly, only the four apps that reside on the task bar show. All of my apps would show prior to my reset of the iPad last night (to fix the Home button). Any ideas on how to fix?

My undertanding is that when you double-click the home button, the apps that are shown are those that are currently active. The reason you are not seeing all of them is that not all of them are active. Before you can access an app in the multitask bar, it has to be turned on first. As a test, try accessing the Notes application. Return to the home screen by clicking the Home button ONCE. Once the home screen appears, double click the home button to bring up the multitasking bar. The Notes app should be on the far left.

Is it possible to shut off multitasking/fast app switching if you want to ?

For ex, I just looked up an address in motion X drive GPS. I'm in my house right now so I don't need it to constantly "be on" right now ... ?

If you don't have a current route set up that you're following, it's not "on", it's in frozen state. What you're wanting to do is remove its frozen state from the memory and CPU. Follow the poster's advice above my post.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11763739

Disabled Welcome Screen - Fast User Switching

My computer says a recently installed program has disabled the Welcome screen
and in order to restore these features I must uninstall the program. The
following file might help me identify the program that made the change:
vrlogon.dll I didn't install any programs. This is a new computer, just
starting. Help how do I find and undo vrlogon.dll?
thanks u

I am quite sure the Fingerprint scanner software has caused this to your notebook.
Start the fingerprint software on your notebook and uncheck an option that says something like this:
"Replace Windows logon with fingerprint-protected logon"
I do not own a notebook with fingerprint software, so I am not quite sure of the name of this security tool. it might be something like "Protector Suite QL" which should also show as an icon in the systray. "Start Control Center", "Settings", "System Settings", "Enable Fast User Switching Support" should be the correct procedure to go.
Once you have done this, your notebook should start normally
regards,
electrochain
Please consider to reply and provide feed-back to this thread once you have your system working again so we will know what to suggest to other fellow notebook user with a similar problem like yours.

Apps do not launch after fast user switch; requires restart

I have 3 users accounts on a mid-2010 with 12 GB RAM; two with parental controls - the kids.
The kids like to play games (particuarally Minecraft), so will log in a play for a while. Typcially when one is done playing they will use the fast user switch menu to go back to the "Login Window..." They are pretty good about shutting down the apps afterwards due to previous performance issues.
When the second user logs in, the only application that seems to work is Finder. Clicking on an app in the dock results in the "Denied"sound. Tyring to launch from Finder or from the dock using "Open" results in nothing happening. It just seems to ignore it - not even the spinny wheel.
It is almost like everything is locked for the second user and the restart clears it. Generally it is responsive for the upper menu items so it does not seem to be a memory or CPU issue. Activity montor does not show anything out of the ordinary.
This does not occur on my accout which I am currently running as an admin. (I shouldn't but am). I can login and run all the applications but if I switch to the second user nothing launches.
I have re-installed Mavericks, and ran both the file and permissions repair on disk. I cleared all of the old cahce. The only thing that seems to work reliably is to restart the system.
It also seems that if the first user logs out then when the second user tries to log in the system just seems to hang after trying to log into the second account. It swtiches to the user screen but gets stuck with the spinny wheel; this requires the one finger force reboot.

Generally yes, they will keep running. You can confirm this by running the "Activity Monitor" app to see their CPU usage.

How to get "fast user switching" and network shares playing nice

I've been alternating between banging my head against a wall and reading every forum I could find to try and get a reasonable compromise between using "Fast user switching" and sharing a folder from a file server. It baffles me how the network share/mount model of OSX/AFP is completely killed by fast-user-switching; this is a big problem with Apple requiring users to be actively logged in to share music/video from iTunes which therefore essentially requires fast-user-switching if anyone else wants to use the computer. (anyone find it odd that you can share files without being logged in, but sharing songs requires an active login for each user who is sharing? Apple: time to make iTunes sharing a service!)
For the sake of example, lets just say I want to share my /Groups folder from my desktop and have it be accessible to my laptop. Here are all the things that I tried:
Apple Method 1) Share /Groups in the Server.app on the desktop (running Lion Server), use finder on the laptop and drag the share icon to "Login Items", alternative use a startup Apple script using "mount volume" Both of the options work and will mount the /Groups folder under /Volumes/Groups, of course when the second person logs in via fast-user-switching (and occasionally the first person for no apparent reason), they will get /Volumes/Groups-1 since /Volumes/Groups is already taken. Tomorrow we log in a different order and now the previously /Volumes/Groups-1 user has their mount at /Volumes/Group and vice versa. Any links, aliases, finder sidebar references, and application settings which pointed to yesterday's location are now BROKEN. Not very user friendly to my mother-in-law who is trying to find those pictures of the kids and doesn't know anything about mount points. I also can't reasonably mirror the file location structure on the desktop so that application preferences that are synced between the two (portable home directories) work. fail.
Apple Method 2) Use automounter and set up by hand direct maps for /Groups or an indirect maps for the children of /Groups. Now it will automatically get mounted to /network/servers/SERVER/Groups/ on the laptop and on the desktop it will automatically create a similar symlink structure so that the same path (/network/servers/SERVER/Groups) work both on desktop and laptop. Cool. Except when the second person logs in, the /network/servers/SERVER/Groups/ mountpoint is already owned by the first user and they don't have any permissions to access it. Fail.
Apple Method 3) Use mount_afs and specify directly the mount-points. Have each user have their own startup AppleScript which mounts /Groups to a different location (e.g. /Users/Shared/username/Groups) that way they don't conflict with multiple users. On the desktop, set up symlinks from /Users/Shared/username/Group to /Groups so that it will be the same as the client and applications settings will work when synchronized back/forth by portable-home-directories. Will it work, yes it does, but what a bear to maintain. Is this really what I should expect to do just to have multiple users on my desktop and laptop (which again is essentially required now if I want to do any type of iTunes sharing). This can't be what apple expects.
What I ended up doing - the "not quite apple" solution.
Non-Apple Method 4) After a read of "Autofs: Automatically Mounting Network File Shares in Mac OS X" (http://images.apple.com/business/docs/Autofs.pdf) at the very end there is a single paragraph of "Kerberized NFS": "A Kerberized NFS mount can have multiple connections from multiple users, each using the correct user’s credentials for each transaction. This allows administrators to support multiple users, each authenticated with their own credentials to the same mount point. This is very different from AFP and SMB mounts," (emphasis mine)
It appears that by using good 'ole NFS (abeint with Kerberos for security!) you can actually have multiple users on the same mount point. Roughly following the guidance at https://support.apple.com/kb/TA24986?viewlocale=en_US. What I needed to do was:
1) create /etc/exports on my desktop and add a single line "/Groups -sec=krb5". The existence of /etc/exports triggered a start of nfsd which no longer has any GUI options in Lion.
2) Add a line to /etc/auto_master on my laptop "/- auto_mymounts" to reference a new direct map.
3) Create /etc/auto_mymounts and add a single line "/Groups SERVER:/Groups" to create the direct map.
THAT'S IT. Three lines in three files.
Now when I log into my laptop, there is a /Groups that is a network mount of my desktop's /Groups, same location AND it works for all of my users, even simultaneously.
In the end I'm happy with what I've got, but man was this a difficult path just to support fast-user-switching. In Lion, Apple appears to be getting away from NFS (no longer turned on by default and remove from the GUI controls) but clearly this really useful functionality which doesn't exist in AFP.
I'm really curious, after all this work. Any other ways to accomplish this?

In my example above, yes I chose to mount the share "Groups" to the top of the root since that is where I put it on my server and I wanted to keep them similar; but that was just my preference, it isn't a requirement. You can export and mount from other directories.

Scanners usable with Fast User Switching

Which mid-range scanner operates with multiple logged users?
Manufacturers seem poorly equipped to answer this, since they test their products with only one user logged in—their support people come up empty-handed. I work in a small but busy office where fast user switching is considered a basic part of the Mac OS, and I feel that if a product doesn't work with multiple users logged the maker shouldn't be allowed to state, without caveat, that it works with OS X.
We recently tried two scanners and found them lacking: first, the HP Color LaserJet 2840 all-in-one. After six months of support calls that often involved switching users, HP happened to mention that user switching with any of their scanners is unsupported. (Good-bye, HP.) Next, the Epson 4490. Ditto—zero support.
My intent was to use the 4490 as a replacement for the color laserjet's function as a copier. We don't want to mess with another multi-function machine, as the makers don't seem to have their act together when it comes to drivers for those. We miss our color laser, but we can get by with an inkjet. In the meantime, everyone in the office needs access to a copier, and I see no reason a printer plus a scanner (with its scan-to-printer button) can't be that copier.
Do you know of a scanner that's fully functional, buttons and all, under OS X—that is, ALL of OS X, including fast user switching?
G4 and G5 iMacs Mac OS X (10.4.6) FileMaker, Toon Boom Studio

Audio output is squelched when fast user switching. Under Panther, audio playing in one user account would continue to play after fast user switching to another account. Under Tiger, the actual process continues, but the sound is muted.
Same thing goes for audio input. I learned this the hard way by setting up an app to record a two hour radio program through the built-in audio input jack. During the recording I switched to another account for an hour. When I later went to listen to the recording, there was an hour of silence corresponding to the time I was in the other account.
I really wish Apple would fix this.

Windows XP see blank screen when remote desktop to Windows 7 with fast user switching disabled

All computers are in workgroup environment, no AD.
Windows 7 pro are configured with fast user switching mode disabled so that only one login session can run at a time. When a Windows 7 machine remote desktop to another Windows 7 machine, the remote desktop 'server' will give 30 seconds count-down for the
console logged in user to accept remote connection, or when timeout expires it kicks out the console logged in user. This is completely ok.
This become a problem when a Windows XP rd client try to remote desktop to these Windows 7 machines, Windows XP see a blank screen if the remote Windows 7 machine has a user logged in, as it is waiting for the user to log off first. This is not desirable
as our administrators want the console session to be logged out automatically if they (administrators) want to remote desktop in.
Is this a configuration problem? Is this a OS design, can't be changed?
Valuable skills are not learned, learned skills aren't valuable.

Hi,
As I know, for RDP session in Windows 7, you don't need to configure the fast user switch option disabled. Windows 7 doesn’t support multiple Remote Desktop sessions by design, that means only one RDP session at a time.
I remote into my Windows 7 machine (which has a user logged in) from my XP machine, all work fine, the user logged in Windows 7 machine is automatically "kicked off".
May I ask a question? Does this issue happen in all XP machines? If you leave Windows 7 machine started and no user logged in, the RDP session in Windows XP established quickly?
I would suggest you keep latest drivers graphic card and latest updates paches for both Windows XP (Windows XP has come to its end of the lifecycle)and Windows 7.
Yolanda Zhu
TechNet Community Support

Time machine effect with fast user switching

I already calculated it will take 11 hours to do my initial back up of 420 gb. but my Gf wants to login. I am certain this will at least slow to process down if not pause or cancel. does any one know for sure?

Audio output is squelched when fast user switching. Under Panther, audio playing in one user account would continue to play after fast user switching to another account. Under Tiger, the actual process continues, but the sound is muted.
Same thing goes for audio input. I learned this the hard way by setting up an app to record a two hour radio program through the built-in audio input jack. During the recording I switched to another account for an hour. When I later went to listen to the recording, there was an hour of silence corresponding to the time I was in the other account.
I really wish Apple would fix this.

Logitech Keyboard Issues with Fast User Switching

I'm running OSX 10.4 on an 800 MHz iMac, and using a Logitech Cordless Navigator keyboard. The keyboard's main feature (for me) is the ability to have the function keys (F1-F12) automatically open applications and folders and such. When I have multiple accounts running though, this feature seems to be tied to whichever one I first logged into. If I switch accounts and try to use one of the keyboard shortcuts nothing happens where I am, but when I switch back to the original account I find that the keyboard has opened the program there. The keyboard types fine in the new account, and I can even change the preferences so the function keys do different things in the different accounts, but the extra functionality seems to be only available for whichever account logs in first.
I realize this may just be a Logitech bug, but any ideas how to fix this? (Also even though I'm the only one using my computer this seems like a mild security issue, if theoretically another user could activate programs on my account without the password.)
800 MHz iMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3) 768 MB RAM

Logitech support is frustrating:
Dear tajmahall14,
Thank you for your recent inquiry about your Keyboards.
I understand you are having issues with the settings for the function keys becoming non-functional when fast switching from one user account to another.
Depending on the system configuration, the Fast User Switching may or may not work. Unfortunately this is not an issue I can address. You may need to contact Apple to see if they have a possible solution to your problem.

Fast App Switching Support

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