Monday, May 14, 2012

Removing GoPro Cineform Studio's Menubar CodecStatus

If you have a GoPro camera you've likely installed GoPro Cineform Studio. However it also installed a menubar item that deals with codecs and whatnot. If you've never asked for it to be there and don't use it it can be hard to get rid of it as it shows up every time you boot up. I'm not even sure what it's officially called but at the bottom of the menu it reads Check Codecs or something.

If you look at Activity Monitor you'll notice a process running called "StereoModeStatus" which is located in /Applications/GoPro/Tools/StereoModeStatus.app (technically it's inside the package here /Contents/MacOS/StereoModeStatus).

Now I don't like things being installed without my asking and I really dislike not having a way to uninstall specific things or at least permanently turning them off. You can select to quit the menubar item but it'll come back upon a reboot.

Also note that it's standard operating procedure to be able to hold down Command and then drag a menubar item around and OUT of the menubar. This thing doesn't let you Command + Drag it out of the menubar. Evil.

Here's what I did to get rid of the CodecCheck menubar thing.

Before this however, you can head to System Settings and look for "Cineform" pane and under the Process tab at the bottom you'll see "Show Stereo Status Menu". Now while this will hide the menu, it doesn't seem to always prevent the process from running. If you're like me and want the process to never run, continue reading:

1. Launch Activity Monitor (Hit Command + Shift + U to open up your utility folder and then hit A to highlight it then Command + O to launch it).

2. Look for "StereoModeStatus". Highlight it.

3. At the top of Activity Monitor's window hit Quit Process. Notice the menubar item vanishes. Yay!

4. Close Activity Monitor.

5. Navigate to your Application folder. (Hit Command + A to open it) Drill down to GoPro folder then inside there open up the Tools folder.

6. Right click on StereoModeStatus and select "Compress "StereoModeStatus".

7. After a second you'll see a new file called "StereoModeStatus.zip". This is your backup copy in case you ever need this thing again. Once you've confirmed this .zip file is there right click on "StereoModeStatus" (the original, not the .zip) and select Move To Trash.

It may ask you for your admin password to put it in the trash; further evidence of it's evil nature.

8. Empty your trash (Shift + Option + Command + Delete) and you're done.

6 comments:

Rick Boykin said...

I opted to remove it this way:

Macintosh HD/Library/LaunchAgents/ Then delete/remove the file "com.cineform.stereomodestatus.plist"

Alternatively, you could open the file in the PLIST Editor in the Dev Tools and just uncheck the "RunAtLoad" field.

The file may also be called: "com.gopro.stereomodestatus.plist" depending on what you installed.

Walker Ferox said...

Excellent method.

I like how clean it is. I'd keep a backup of the file someplace just in case but that's probably me being overly cautious.

Tibo said...

There is a cleaner way to remove the menu icon!

Go to your System Preferences, and at the bottom there's an icon called Cineform. At the bottom of the first tab, uncheck the box "Show Stereo Status Menu"

Keala Asato said...

Thank you for this post. That program is really annoying.

keats said...

hahaha nice one Tibo :)
though not bruce warns that this is only a diversion to make you think it is not running when in fact it goes covert.
better delete the file like everyone else ;P

Ben Neufeld said...

Thanks, appreciate it. Hate stuff running when I don't tell it to. On the flip side, if I tell it to jump, it better.