PixInsight 1.9.3 Known Issues and Fixes (Windows / macOS / Linux)

The following is compiled from the PixInsight official forum’s announcement of known issues in the latest version, 1.9.3 (Lockhart build 1646), with the corresponding fixes attached, to make it easy for users on all three major platforms to work through them.

Windows

XISF files are treated as potentially dangerous by Windows Security, causing severe delays.

On some Windows 11 installations, Windows Security flags XISF files as potentially dangerous when a Qt 6-based application performs a directory search operation (curiously, Qt 5-based applications don’t trigger this). Under default settings, Windows Security (and Windows Defender) will load and scan every existing XISF file during a directory search. Typically, having just 5 to 10 XISF images in a folder can cause a 20-to-30-second delay; and if the folder contains 100 or more large XISF files, you may even be forced to kill the application.

The fix is simple: add an exclusion for the specific file extension in Windows Security. All users running PixInsight on Windows are advised to do the following:

1. Open the Start menu
2. Click “Windows Security”
3. Go to “Virus & threat protection”
4. Under “Virus & threat protection settings,” click “Manage settings”
5. At the bottom of the page, under the “Exclusions” section, click “Add or remove exclusions”
6. Accept the User Account Control (UAC) prompt
7. Click the “Add an exclusion” button
8. Choose “File type” from the drop-down menu
9. In the “Enter file extension” field, type xisf
10. Click “Add”

In fact, all of PixInsight’s file extensions can potentially be flagged as dangerous, so it’s advisable to add exclusions for xpsm, xdrz, and xnml as well. That said, since these files are usually very small, scanning them has little impact on performance even if it happens. Also note that other antivirus software may exhibit similar problems.

macOS

1. Installation gets stuck at “Registering updated components.” When installing on Apple Silicon machines, it may spend a very long time stuck at the “Registering updated components” step, showing a clearly inaccurate message like “Installation time remaining: less than a minute.” The developers say there’s nothing they can do about this—it’s entirely the responsibility of macOS and its installation mechanism, and users can only wait patiently.

2. Some menus are missing icons. Certain menu items (especially image and process icons, as well as some main menu items) don’t show icons in the right-click menu. This is an unresolved issue in Qt 6.8, and it isn’t fixed even in Qt 6.8.2. It’s purely cosmetic and has no effect on functionality; the developers hope to fix it in the next version of the core application.

Linux

1. KDE Plasma’s “Morphing Popups” animation seriously interferes with PixInsight. Recent versions of the KDE Plasma desktop environment include a “Morphing Popups” effect, and if it’s enabled, operations in the PixInsight core application such as dragging icons and switching the view selector become extremely sluggish. Simply disable this effect through KDE System Settings—it’s a simple operation.

2. Incompatible with the open-source Nouveau graphics driver. If your Linux distribution uses Nouveau by default, you must remove it and switch to NVIDIA’s proprietary driver for PixInsight to work properly.

3. Wayland is not supported. Because Wayland lacks a global coordinate system, it’s impossible to programmatically set the position of top-level windows, which is incompatible with PixInsight’s graphical interface. Supporting Wayland would require rewriting a substantial portion of the core application. Therefore, to run PixInsight on Linux, you must have a working X11 / XCB system.