ArchiCAD 28 has a DNS, server address or macOS privacy bug

[jamesMorris]

Just a small heads up, ArchiCAD 28.1.1 on macOS has a DNS or server address or macOS privacy bug.

We don't route DNS through VPN. 

One user works from remote with macOS.

The primary address of your BimCloud Basic 27 server is: bimserver.mycompany.local:27000

The secondary address of that BimCloud Basic 27 server is static IPv4:27000.

BimCloud Basic 28 runs on the same machine with the same settings, just with port 28000.

In ArchiCAD 27, the user can connect without any problems. 

In ArchiCAD 28, the same user on the same mac will get this error:

Even though the status page looks totally fine:

When going into network diagnostics, we see that bimserver.mycompany.local does not get resolved, as expected. But the second entry (the static IPv4) works. 

Even manually setting the static IPv4 as the primary address will not solve the issue. 

Only routing DNS through WireGuard VPN solves the issue. As soon as we routed the DNS through VPN, ArchiCAD triggered a macOS privacy "local networks" popup. 

Conclusion:

I suspect that no matter what the users sets, for some strange reason the DNS entry is preferred over the IPv4 entry, even if changed manually. Also the fallback from the first DNS entry to the second static IPv4 does not work. 

The other explanation would be that IPv4 was blocked by macOS privacy and only a working DNS was able to trigger the popup. 

Either way, ArchiCAD could avoid this by triggering the "local network" privacy popup as soon as the user opens anything related to Teamwork. 

Maybe this helps other macOS users 🙂