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Hero Lab for Mac 64 bit Issues

A

Aristodeimos

Member
1. Can someone explain to me why I have to click "ok" about 10-25 times every time I try to open Hero Lab for Mac on my 64 bit machine. It's not even consistent how many times I have to click it. The message window says "Hero Lab.app would like to access files in your Documents folder. Hero Lab needs to access data files in your Document folder. Don't Allow / Ok. As stated, I end up getting this message 6-25 times every time I try to open the program or a file.

2. Hero Lab is suffering serious lag. I click on buttons and have to wait about a 3-second count for it to react. I've been using Hero Lab for Mac since it was originally released. Never had any problems until about 1-2 months ago.
 
You may have too many applications open, and the Mac is low on memory? Send an email to support with what your Mac is and details of the problems you are having.
 
Sounds like permissions issues in the user account. Create a test user on the computer and don't connect to any email, appleID, or other account. Then open the app and try it. Does the issue persist? Then it os a problem with the App or the System. Does the issue go away? Then the issue is with the user account settings.

For slowness on a Mac start with clearing the PRAM or SMC. If the issue persists look at Startup items and study what is happening in Activity Monitor.
 
I have the same issue. It started with the 64 bit upgrade and the Catalina macOS upgrade. I have a 2018 MacBook Pro.

The prompts for access to Documents I believe is part of the new Catalina security updates. Other applications also have the same prompt, but only the first time I use them. Hero Lab asks every time I open the application and it prompts many times.

The lag has been rather consistent since the 64 bit upgrade. Switching tabs (say In Play to Magic) takes 1-2 seconds. Right now I'm playing an Inquisitor in Pathfinder and scrolling through my abilities to select a Judgement takes ~6 seconds. The worst lag is when trying to add a piece of equipment to the character. Scrolling or searching through the list is something that takes so long I give up doing this while playing the game.

I use iStatMenu to monitor system resources. While using Hero Lab, my CPU and Memory do not break 50% of max. Watching Hero Lab in Activity Monitor, I do see CPU climb when performing these functions, but nothing concerning. It has more room, but doesn't use it.

I should really reach out to support....
 
I figured it out. Mac users must go to Settings > Security & Privacy > Full Disc Access. Unlock Security. Push the "+" button. Go to "Applications" and click the box next to "Hero Lab". Relock Security. Should work fine from that point on. PM me if you have further questions.
 
Thanks Aristodeimos! That ended up solving the multiple Documents prompts, but not the poor performance. Due to an unrelated issue, I ended up with a new MacBook Pro. I figured now would be the best time to test Hero Lab as the OS was freshly installed, and performance was still abysmal. Adding damage or healing took seconds for each button click. Scrolling through gear, spells, or character abilities is slow to the point of unusable.

To my surprise, the Windows version of Hero Lab works especially well in macOS Catalina via wine. Since there are some complexities I haven't figured out yet with wine and 32bit/64bit support in catalina, I ended up using CrossOver by CodeWeavers. They have full support for catalina and Hero Lab installed without issue and runs with the performance I would expect.
 
Aristodeimos said:
I figured it out. Mac users must go to Settings > Security & Privacy > Full Disc Access. Unlock Security. Push the "+" button. Go to "Applications" and click the box next to "Hero Lab". Relock Security. Should work fine from that point on. PM me if you have further questions.
Click to expand...

I made the changes you suggested, and still having the same issues, as well as the sluggishness. Have had these issues since 64 bit came out. Any other suggestions?
 
I'm also finding HL performance to by abysmal on OSX Catalina. I'm using a quad-core 3.2 GHz i5 with 32GB of RAM and a fast internal SSD. And it takes 1.5s to switch characters. .5s just to switch between tabs?

That's pretty bad.

Is HL Classic for Mac still being maintained?

I'll try running HL in a Windows VM. If it performs better in a VM something is terribly, terribly wrong.
 
I'm still on Mojave and the performance is pretty slow in some places.
It's unclear but it seems like the performance gets worse when a long list of items is present like when adding new weapons, etc.

I tried the suggestion to allow full disk access with no noticable results.
 
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I just bought a new 2020 model MacBook Air. I'm running Catalina 10.15.16 and I downloaded HL from the website and I get an error saying

"Hero Lab" can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software.
This software needs to be updated. Contact the developer for more information.

I hope this is the right place to be posting this.
 
To bypass that type of issue, Phil, you will simply need to click "Show in Finder" when that error appears or otherwise locate the Hero Lab Classic software on your computer with Finder, Right-Click, and then use the context menu to select the alternative Open Option there. Once you do this you'll be shown a similar error window but this time you will be afforded the option to open the software anyhow.

Once you do this a single time your system should remember that you've done so an effectively whitelist the software, at least until the next OS update on that machine.
 
I'm still having sluggishness issues, like 4-5 seconds to switch tabs and scrolling down a long list of items can crash it or take about 35sec to finish scrolling.

2017 MacBook Pro with 3.1ghz I7 16gb ram on Mojave 10.14.6

The only other thing open is a browser not doing anything. Even happens when no other software is open.

I have tried reinstalling it to no avail.
 
I've tried to start using HLC again after a long break and a Pathfinder 2e stint. I am also having CONSTANT and unusable quantity of crashes as well as the extremely annoying "permissions" popups.

Something I have noticed, every time you go to security and toggle off Full Disk Access and immediately toggle it back on, you do not get any permission popups for the entire session. However, as soon as you close and then reopen the program, they come storming back.

I sent in a tech support request with crash logs and what I remembered what I was doing... but after just one hour of HLC and 4 crashes, it is completely unusable in its current state :/
 
I'm also getting unacceptable lag with my Hero Lab on my Mac.

If Hero Labs Classic is not being developed anymore, I'd want to know so I can begin looking for an alternative.

I don't mind shelling upgrade pricing for a working 64-bit version of Hero Labs (not barely working, but actually working), after all developers still need to make a living. But I'm not going to be investing any more money in this system (eg. in buying new books) if Hero Labs for Mac continue to lag like this.
 
IIRC, there was a bug in which fields weren't being updated when a dependent value changed. The workaround was for LW to turn on automatic recalculation of everything when any value changed. Since there's no one working on HLC at the moment, the bug is not likely to be fixed and the workaround is probably permanent.
 
I experienced the bug where things got incredibly slow and I have found a workaround.

If you go to /Applications and right-click on Hero Lab, you'll have an option to "Get Info", click on that, you'll then have an checkbox labelled "Open in Low Resolution Mode", check that.

The application won't look as sharp, but you won't be stuck waiting for many seconds each time you click or scroll.
 
Huh, that seems to work for me, and it's better than just being super slow, albeit a pain.

Does anyone know if Hero Lab works on Big Sur? With the lack of attention paid to Hero Lab on Mac, I'm a little concerned that it might not work on new computers/the new OS.
 
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