Warning Before Restarting if Recording is in Progress

Channels DVR Server
#1

This might be a long-shot…and maybe more of a feature request…

Is there any way for Channels to trigger a warning dialogue if there is a DVR recording in progress or pending and you attempt to restart or shut down the machine your server is on? I’m running mine on a Mac Mini, and for the most part it stays on all the time, but there are times when I add or update software etc, where a restart is required. When this happens I never really stop to consider that something might be recording in the background. If there was a warning dialogue that would pop up before restarting, it would be incredibly helpful. Or maybe the menu bar icon could turn red during a recording (and yellow if recording soon)…just something visual to make scatterbrains like me stop and think before cutting off the one-time airing of my favorite episode of Murphy Brown:/

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#2

That would be really tricky, since there is no mechanism of which I’m aware by which one might accomplish this–at least not in Unix-derivative operating systems, of which the Mac OS is one.

The DVR engine is running as a service under the OS. When you begin a shutdown, the OS merely signals all processes to stop. There is no hook, anywhere in the process, to provide an “Are you sure?” callback/intercept.

If I may be allowed an observation: This is why it’s unwise to run network services on desktop machines :wink:

#3

Windows actually has an API for us to prevent shutdown, which we use and you see a little alert that the DVR is busy if you try to shutdown.

I don’t think macOS has anything similar. But we could probably change the menu bar icon somehow. I agree this would be a nice to have feature.

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#4

That would be awesome. The Windows feature sounds perfect, but having an icon that changes color based on status is still a great little tweak:)