It was never easy to convince Apple that your device had simply gone south on its own (especially if they opened the case and it smelled like the entire logic board had downed a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon). Beyond the Liquid Contact Indicators inside the hardware, a new chunk of software seems to be in place that alerts Apple as to whether liquids have been detected in the USB-C ports.
Apple’s new macOS Sonoma 14.1 includes a new system daemon named “liquiddetectiond,” which, as the name suggests, can identify when the computer has been exposed to liquids. More specifically, this daemon runs in the background to collect liquid detection analysis from each USB-C port on the Mac.
The daemon, which is described as a “Liquid Detection and Corrosion Mitigation Daemon,” can also be found in iOS and iPadOS, which use a similar daemon that is used to alert users when liquid is detected in the connector so that they immediately unplug the charging cable to prevent damage.
For the macOS side of things, the code references indicate that the daemon is used only used for “analytics” and is not associated with end-user features. While Apple may one day include a more user-facing element such as warning messages, it seems more likely that the data collected by this daemon will be used for technicians to determine whether a Mac is eligible for free repair.
It’s unclear at this point whether the new daemon works with any Macs running the latest version of macOS or only with M3 Macs due to some extra hardware requirement.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via 9to5Mac