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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-28T20:49:03+00:00

I am looking for a way to start an application with an alternate system

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I am looking for a way to start an application with an alternate system time than that which is set. Basically one of the beta programs I use has a bug (it really is a bug) that no longer lets it work past January 29th. Setting my system time to a few day prior fixed worked the issue and the app works fine now however some of my other applications are not working properly now.

As a general question (I could see my self using this for other things), is it possible to launch an application and make it think there is an alternate system time?

Specifically though, I am running Mac OS 10.7.2 and I’m trying to launch MouseShare with an alternate system time than that which is set.

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  1. Editorial Team

    OK, I have found a solution. There is a nice library called libfaketime, which was recomended to me on the ‘Unix & Linux’ Stack Exchange via this post.

    Easiest way to accomplish it on OSX:

    $ cd $HOME/Library/
$ git clone clone git://github.com/wolfcw/libfaketime.git
$ cd libfaketime/src/
$ make -f Makefile.MacOS
$ export DYLD_FORCE_FLAT_NAMESPACE=1
$ export DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES=/Users/<USERNAME>/Library/libfaketime/src/libfaketime.dylib.1 
$ export FAKETIME="@2012-01-01 01:01:01"

    verify it’s functioning (i.e the date is January 1st)

    $ date
 Sun Jan  1 01:01:01 CST 2012

    All is well then!

    $ open /Applications/ShareMouse.app/

    Should be good for 28 days 17 hours (i.e. until it see’s the system time as 2012-01-29 17:00:00 don’t ask me how they didn’t see the bug coming?)

    I couldn’t get the method of modify the Info.plist of the application to work (as described in the README.OSX)

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