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So basically my macbook pro (mid 2010) was acting funny (shutting off when left corner was tapped/bumped, high fan when no activity, etc.), nothing helped so I reset the SMC (I think that's what it's called, I'm a little sleep deprived here) and the PRAM. Now my volume control overlay and brightness overlay are displaying incorrectly. Initially, they were displaying half off the screen, centered on the lower half, so I force-reset Finder, hoping that this would help. Now both the overlays are centered.. on the bottom half of the screen, instead of being centered in the actual middle of the screen.

I know this is a ridiculous thing to be bothered by, but I am wondering if there is maybe some AppleScript command that I can use to reset the settings for the overlay? I know that one of these resets is what caused this, and I don't know how. Please help if you can! Thanks :)

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I would try a few things.

  1. Check if BezelUIServer is running constantly (in Activity Monitor). It should only start (for short durations) whenever you display an overlay (called Bezel by Apple). That server is actually located here: /System/Library/LoginPlugins/BezelServices.loginPlugin/Contents/Resources/BezelUI/BezelUIServer

  2. If you can download the OS X Installer, you might be able to extract the specific "LoginPlugin" from the installation disk and overwrite it (with an admin account) under: /System/Library/LoginPlugins/BezelServices.loginPlugin

  3. There appears to be a configuration file com.apple.BezelServices.plist under /Library/Preferences. You might want to reset this file (just rename it and see if OS X just re-creates it for you).

  4. Attach a secondary monitor and make that your primary screen (with both displays setup side-by-side and not to mirror). This way you might see if the overlay is also misplaced on the secondary screen in the same location. It might have something to do with your graphics card (settings) and you might get a different result if that has to display two monitors.

  5. Also run Disk Utility and to Verify Disk Permissions then Repair Disk Permissions and also Verify Disk and Repair Disk if necessary, but this may require you to log in from a recovery partition.

  6. If nothing works and you really want this fixed, you could reinstall OS X, but you should really backup your files for this one. Well, in your case with the MacBook acting up, I would do that in any case! There is a very simple step-by-step guide from Apple here: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18872 and it goes like this:

  1. In the menu bar, choose Apple menu > Restart. Once your Mac restarts (and the gray screen appears), hold down the Command (⌘) and R keys.
  2. Select Reinstall OS X, then click Continue.
  3. Follow the onscreen instructions. In the pane where you select a disk, select your current OS X disk (in most cases, it’s the only one available).
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  • bezel only runs when utilized for a short time will attempt the installer fix library did not regenerate the plist file for me i don't have a second monitor at the moment, unfortunately, so I cannot check this verified permissions, permissions differ on a lot of quicktime stuff (probably because I use VLC and have changed all video media to display through that) and a couple display files. will repair and get back to you. thanks for the suggestions! – AshLily Sep 5 '15 at 8:24
  • sorry about the last comment I can’t figure out how to do line breaks for some reason – AshLily Sep 5 '15 at 8:30
  • repairing permissions did not fix the issue (I was really hopeful after I saw that one of them was a "display" file. can I just redownload OS X from the App Store and view the package contents to extract the file you mentioned? Or will files downloaded from the App Store not allow you to do that? (I know that they differ in many ways with packages downloaded directly from the internet) – AshLily Sep 5 '15 at 8:37
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    Ok. I did those steps too, still no change. Starting to feel like I'm going crazy. The volume and brightness overlay are usually in the direct middle of the screen, right? Just to make sure I'm not losing my marbles here. Starting to look like I might just have to deal with this weirdness for now. I really appreciate your help though. The tapping issue seems to be gone at least, haha. – AshLily Sep 5 '15 at 9:36
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    Yeah, the overlays are always centred. I suppose you could do a restore from the recovery partition and see if that helps. I'll add that to the answer. – Chris Sep 6 '15 at 12:29

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