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mac big sur could not load preferences pane

After upgrading to big sur I get this message when trying to open system preferences: mac big sur could not load preferences panemac big sur could not load preferences pane".


How to fix? thanks.

Posted on May 2, 2021 8:17 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 3, 2021 9:49 AM

For sure, it is a bit extreme measure.


Try startup in Safe Mode.


Startup in Safe mode. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201262

To leave Safe Mode, click  in the menu bar and choose “Restart”

Quote:

Safe mode prevents your Mac from loading certain software when it starts up, including login items, system extensions not required by macOS, and fonts not installed by macOS. It also does a basic check of your startup disk, similar to using First Aid in Disk Utility. And it deletes some system caches, including font caches and the kernel cache, which will be created again automatically as needed.

4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 3, 2021 9:49 AM in response to Scott Stark

For sure, it is a bit extreme measure.


Try startup in Safe Mode.


Startup in Safe mode. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201262

To leave Safe Mode, click  in the menu bar and choose “Restart”

Quote:

Safe mode prevents your Mac from loading certain software when it starts up, including login items, system extensions not required by macOS, and fonts not installed by macOS. It also does a basic check of your startup disk, similar to using First Aid in Disk Utility. And it deletes some system caches, including font caches and the kernel cache, which will be created again automatically as needed.

May 2, 2021 10:12 AM in response to Scott Stark

Scott Stark wrote:

After upgrading to big sur I get this message when trying to open system preferences: mac big sur could not load preferences panemac big sur could not load preferences pane".

How to fix? thanks.



If Screen Time is on, this could restrict access to System Preferences on the Mac. Here is an article to follow on steps to help resolve this issue:


Use Screen Time on your Mac

ref: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251700483?answerId=253279227022#253279227022

May 3, 2021 7:50 AM in response to dominic23

Seems rather an extreme solution :-)


I did figure something out, turns out there are now two System Preferences apps. One is in /Applications, the other (older version) is in /Applications/Extra App Files. The first one works fine, but the second broken one is the one that's called from the Apple menu. If I could figure out how to point it to the right one all would be fine.


Don't know why the upgrade created this problem.


thanks for the replies..

mac big sur could not load preferences pane

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