How to find which app owns a modal window?

Question

I have a modal window popping up randomly with the message:

Insecure update error!

For security reasons, you need to code sign your application or sign your updates with a DSA key. See Sparkle's documentation for more information.

I know Sparkle is an autoupdate framework used by Mac applications so how can I find which application is failing on the update process?

Answer 1

You can scan which of your installed apps are using the Sparkle framework by doing this in the Terminal:

find /Applications -path '*Autoupdate.app/Contents/Info.plist' -exec echo {} \; -exec grep -A1 CFBundleShortVersionString '{}' \; | grep -v CFBundleShortVersionString 

and then update the ones that are using old Sparkle versions (and therefore are affected by this issue) - or uninstall them if their authors haven't made the necessary updates yet.

Answer 2

You can use the Accessibility Inspector, which is one of the Developer Tools.

Use the Start inspection follows point toolbar button, then click on the titlebar of the dialog with the error message, and under Advanced -> Parent you can find information about who is owning that dialog.

Tested on macOS Mojave 10.14.

(in my case, that dialog was coming from mySIMBLHelper)