How I fixed the onVue app freezing issue in Mac OS for certification exams
When passing specific certification exams (Microsoft or AWS Certifications) at home, you must use the onVue app as an exam proctoring tool. While there are some other interesting problems with it (like the network being called slow despite being more than satisfactory), one problem on Mac that you can encounter is your screen freezing without any response after the exam (test or actual) starts. Here I would like to discuss how to “revive” your computer, and how to fix this issue so that you don’t have to stress out during your exam
When your screen is frozen
The only thing you can do to fix the problem is a full computer reboot. Press and hold the power button until your computer turns off, then turn it on again. Note that this problem will reappear the next time you try to start the exam. So, in order to prevent the issue from happening you need to tweak some permissions which I will explain in the next section.
Preventing the issue
The main problem is that onVue does not set/request all of the permissions required for it to run an exam. But once it freezes your screen, you cannot see that request, hence you have to do a manual reboot. Thus, the way I fixed it was setting those permissions manually.
The permissions that you need to grant onVue are:
- Microphone
- Camera
- Input Monitoring
- Screen Recording
You can do that by going to System Preferences -> Privacy & Security. Then you find the permissions, click on the + sign, and add onVue to the list.
This should fix your problems. However, just because it worked on the test system check may not necessarily mean it will work during the actual exam, so make sure you are on time and ready to fix any unexpected issues. Your exam time will not be reduced because you had some issues with the onVue app.
