Nik Collection is now behaving like Ransomeware for me

I am using NIKcollection 3 on a MAC.

usually when I first click on a Nik filter set I get a hostage popup asking for me to purchase the latest Nik update. Everything is locked out until I click on upgrade or no thanks, I can generally click no thanks and the popup goes away… but increasingly this pops up -and before I can click on anything- it disappears from view and everything stays locked!

I have searched and searched trying to find the hostage popup window but once it is gone from view I can not get it back and everything is frozen and I can not even close the filter and get back to photoshop!

The only thing I can do is force-close photoshop and lose all my work!!!

this SUCKS!

My wife thinks I should just pay the ransom and hope it fixes the problem. I am not too sure that will indeed fix things as Nik is likely to do this again with any new paid updates.

Has anyone found a solution to this issue?

(Edited: I have Nik Collection V3 not v4)

1 Like

@7dude, your issue looks like something that you should address to DxO support at support.dxo.com.

Thanks, worth a shot. I’ll let you know if they reply…

DxO support wrote me back with the following solution. Looks like it is working so far! Thank you platypus, have a great year!

To disable the upgrade pop-up, please open the following file using TextEdit:

MacintoshHD/Library/Preferences/DxO/Nik Collection/NikCollection.cfg

and look for:

group name=“Checkforupdate”
key name=“LastCheck” type-“string” value=" any information here "/
/group

if this line is found:

<key name=“LastCheck” type-“string” value=" any information here "/>

replace it with:

key name=“LastCheck” type=“string” value=“1654697297”/

Please only replace the text exactly and do not omit any blank lines already in the file, specifically the one after the second /group.

PLEASE NOTE: This is not the Library folder in your user account.—

I had to take a couple of additional steps as well.

  1. I needed to enable my LIBRARY folder on the MAC HD to be viewable so I could navigate to the .cfg file. My MAC had the LIBRARY folder set to hidden as a default.
  2. I needed to give read/write permission to the containing folder so that I could edit the .cfg file.
  3. I needed to locate the apple textedit app and use that to make the edits to the .cfg file.
1 Like

Note: The hidden Library folder is the one in your user account. MacintoshHD/Library/ is always visible.