Self-healing

Storage Studio checks its own working parts when it starts and regularly while it's running, and quietly repairs the problems that would otherwise need a support conversation — a damaged or stuck background service, or missing storage for its own settings and log. These checks only look after Storage Studio itself; they never move, change or remove your files.

What it checks and repairs

%% caption: How a self-healing check runs
flowchart TD
  A[Launch, wake from sleep, or the next scheduled check] --> B[Run each check in turn]
  B --> C{Is this part healthy?}
  C -->|Yes| D[Nothing to do]
  C -->|No| E{Can it be repaired safely?}
  E -->|Yes| F[Repair it quietly]
  E -->|No| G[Mark it as needing attention]
  D --> H[Record the result in the Services pane]
  F --> H
  G --> H

When it runs

• At every launch.
• Every 5 minutes while you're using Storage Studio, and every 30 minutes while it's hidden.
• Not at all while your Mac is asleep, then once straight away when it wakes — drives may have come and gone in the meantime.

The checks are small and run on your Mac; nothing is sent anywhere.

Where to see it

Repairs are silent on purpose: there's nothing for you to do, so they don't appear in the popover. To see the latest result, open Settings → Services and look at the Self-healing monitor row (see The Services pane):

Other things that look after themselves

• Interrupted removals. If your Mac stops part-way through moving something into the Recycle Vault, the next launch sorts it out: an item whose copy finished is added to the list, and a half-made copy is cleared away. The original wasn't removed in that case.
• Restore points. A restore point that was never finished, or has nothing in it, is marked Set aside, and an item whose moved copy has gone is marked as not reversible. Nothing is deleted. See Restore Points.

What it never does on its own

• It never touches your files, folders or apps — only Storage Studio's own parts.
• It never moves anything back, rolls anything back or restores anything. Those are always your decision.
• It never clears the Recycle Vault items that are waiting on your Mac for your drive to come back.

One side effect to know about: if you use Stop Service in the Advanced view, the next check will find the background service not running and start it again. If you want Storage Studio's automatic actions to stay off, use Pause instead — see Pausing or stopping everything.

If a problem keeps coming back, see "Service is stopped" won't go away or Something's not working: start here.

See also: How Storage Studio keeps every change reversible · Sharing diagnostic logs with support