I made the mistake of opening the keyboard viewer (from the international menulet) while the password authentication dialog was up, and now every time the authentication window opens, so does keyboard viewer.

Any idea how to make it stop doing that?

You could play with ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.KeyboardViewerServer.plist

Just a guess.

*shrug* only contains prefs for the window, not what should trigger it.

I really haven't ever seen that behavior before, where it opens automatically when you launch an app that was using it recently.

Under precisely what circumstances was the password authentication dialog "up?" (Can they be duplicated for experimentation purposes?)

Anytime the system prompts me for a password.

Interesting. ANY password, not just my admin password. It pops up when I try to unlock a system preference, AND when I try to open an encrypted disk image whose password is not in my keychain....

so it's tied to that password dialog box itself somehow?

I hesitate to ask this, but have you rebooted since this aberrant behavior started?

oh yes, it's been rebooted at least three times since the start of the problem. I'm a fairly heavy user and with a 4gb memory ceiling, the "yellow and red" in activity monitor gets gruesome after a week or so up so I usually reboot every ten days or so to reclaim that.

I signed-on to your conundrum by opening Keyboard Viewer from the Input menulet with a CCC authentication dialog box open (OS X 10.6.8), so now there are two of us with an active interest in finding a solution to the problem.

Updates:

1. Repairing permissions didn't help.
2. Unchecking and re-checking the applicable boxes in SysPrefs > Language & Text > Input Sources didn't help (although I admit to forgetting to log out/in after unchecking the boxes).
3. Zapping PRAM turned the trick...I guess.
4. I can no longer open KV while a CCC authentication dialog box is open.
5. KV does open while a Yasu authentication dialog box is open, but it doesn't "stick" like it did with CCC.
6. Note that KV opens on top of Yasu's dialog box as opposed to its having opened beneath CCC's dialog box the time the wonkiness appeared.

Got me beat!

That got an LOL from over this way, sorry 'bout that!

They say "If you're not a part of the solution, you're a part of the problem", maybe this is related in a twisted sort of way...

Huh? (I deliberately risked getting "infected," as I've done on multiple occasions, knowing that I've got an up-to-date backup to clone over the damaged volume.)

Did zapping PRAM work for you?

I haven't tried that yet though I would be very surprised if it helped. There's nothing really in there that should influence that.

apple:~ nfisher $ nvram -p
efi-boot-device <array><dict><key>IOMatch</key><dict><key>IOProviderClass</key><string>IOMedia</string><key>
IOPropertyMatch</key><dict><key>UUID</key><string>F1DCCDC2-8BA9-4926-AB45-1BB818FE4955</string></dict>
</dict><key>BLLastBSDName</key><string>disk0s2</string></dict></array>%00
efi-boot-device-data %02%01%0c%00%d0A%03%0a%00%00%00%00%01%01%06%00%02%1f%03%12%0a%00%00%00%00%00%00
%00%04%01*%00%02%00%00%00(@%06%00%00%00%00%00%a0&JW%00%00%00%00%c2%cd%dc%f1%a9%8b&I%abE%1b%b8%18%feIU
%02%02%7f%ff%04%00
boot-args srv=1
boot-image %02%01%0c%00%d0A%03%0a%00%00%00%00%01%01%06%00%02%1f%03%12%0a%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%04%0
1*%00%02%00%00%00(@%06%00%00%00%00%00%a0&JW%00%00%00%00%c2%cd%dc%f1%a9%8b&I%abE%1b%b8%18%feIU%02%02%04
%04%1a%001%000%00a%000%00c%009%000%000%000%000%00%00%00%7f%ff%04%00
prev-lang:kbd en:0
SystemAudioVolume 2

I dunno... As I said, it apparently worked for me, although, like you, I'm not aware of any particular reason why it should have.

Edit: If zapping PRAM wasn't the answer, restarting with the two applicable check-boxes unchecked was.

I leave the international menu up full time here so I can have access to keyboard viewer if needed. or switch to japanese

You're not digesting what I've written...

I got myself into the same situation with Keyboard Viewer as you reported being in, and I solved the (your) problem by either

1. zapping PRAM or
2. restarting with the two applicable boxes unchecked.(Note that you're allowed to re-check them after restarting. )

(I keep Cherokee - Nation as my alternate language to keep the flag in my menu bar.)

Edit: The anomalous behavior ceased after I zapped PRAM with the two applicable boxes unchecked, and I can't recreate it, so I can't be certain whether it was the zap or the unchecked restart that stopped it.

It may be worth the time to restart in Safe Boot as that often fixes assorted ills. But when, why, and how this sometimes works still eludes me.

Expanding an earlier post... V1's issue was duplicated when I called up Keyboard Viewer with a CCC authentication dialog box open and KV appear hidden behind the box, i.e. not "on top." (Edit:The issue seems to have involved KV's failure to appear "on top" of authentication dialog boxes.)

Since I corrected the problem, I can no longer call up KV with any authentication dialog box (that I've tried) open except for Yasu's, and in that instance KV appears "on top" and doesn't create any issues.

looks like osx has multiple bugs involving the authentication dialog box and keyboard viewer?

Do you consider not being able to call up Keyboard Viewer while you've got an authentication dialog box open to be a bug? While that sounds kinda iffy to me, I agree that KV's appearing, but not "on top," is likely a bug.

But have you been able to correct your issue as I've described?

I have seen almost the same situation, but with the Character Viewer instead of the Keyboard Viewer. Wherever it's happening, it doesn't seem to be in your user folder, because the Character Viewer would even pop up in the Login Window (summoned by Fast User Switching) which, considering that it's asking which user you want to be, shouldn't be consulting any of the current users preferences.

What finally worked for me was to repeatedly Show/Hide the Character Viewer. Apparently, it's confused about whether it's currently being shown, and the menu doesn't reflect reality until it's been toggled a few times.

Just a guess, something that occurred to me as I typed the above, but the window asking for your password must be being run by process running as root, and maybe it's saving its state in root's preferences folder (~root/Library/Preferences) instead of in yours (~/Library/Preferences). ~root is /var/root. I tried to test that, but (a) I couldn't get it to happen again (on 10.7.4), and (b) nothing in that folder changed while I was trying. I would call that inconclusive either way.

current behavior:

- Int Menu has Show keyboard viewer

go to system prefs, select accounts, click padlock

- auth window opens
- keyboard viewer window opens
- Int Menu has Show keyboard viewer (not Hide)

select Show keyboard viewer

- no visible change

select Hide keyboard viewer

- keyboard viewer disappears

click in this window
click back in the auth window (still open)

- keyboard viewer reappears!
- menu is still "show keyboard viewer"

now I can keep going to the menu and it continues to say "show keyboard viewer" but each time I select it, the viewer either shows or hides.


so in summary, the computer is on acid.

but yes after much playing with various combinations of the above, the auth dialog has stopped popping up the viewer.

I assume zapping PRAM didn't fix it for you. Right?

One last try: I jumped to the quite possibly erroneous conclusion that zapping PRAM was the solution and tried to clarify earlier...apparently unsuccessfully, so...

I zapped PRAM with the applicable boxes unchecked, and initially overlooked the possibility that it was simply the restart with the boxes unchecked, not the zap, that cleared up the issue.

Since I can't recreate the issue I can't test, but I'm inclined to agree with V1 about zapping PRAM, and I now think that the restart with the boxes unchecked, not the zap, was the answer.

Did you find, as I did, that the unwanted Viewer panes were popping up beneath the dialog box?

Now that I've corrected the situation, every instance in which an unwanted Viewer pane formerly popped up no longer automatically generates one, and, further, I can't call one up voluntarily either, except in the case of Yasu (which I didn't look at during the issue), but the Viewer pane pops up on top of the dialog box in that instance.

sounds like I have successfully infected several regulars' machines with my evil KV virus!

Oy vey, I just stumbled into this trap too.

Fortunately, the other top google hit was a recent apple support page.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3104

The trick to fix it (worked for me) is not to close the keyboard viewer with the red close button (because, why would we ever do that?), rather, go back to the drop-down menu and select Hide Keyboard Viewer.

Mine was showing up every time I hit the "Back" button on my 5-button mouse. Made browsing sucktacular.

While not true 100% of the time (e.g., System Preferences for one), the red button only closes the window and leaves the application running. This could account for the viewer showing up when you moved to a fresh page. True, "Hide Keyboard Viewer" doesn't seem to imply "quitting", but…