After installing Big Sur, Qrecall hangs at create new archive; whether I try to put one on a USB drive of my HD. Spinning beachball and eventually I force quit.

I previously deleted the archive and Qrecall and reinstalled Catalina before upgrading because Qrecall had created 80GB of in. a com.qrecall.capture file that could not be deleted or purged.

We're not aware of any compatibility issue with Big Sur that would prevent you from creating an archive.

Let's start by getting a diagnostic report. Launch the QRecall application, then go to Help > Send Report.

James,

The problem seems to be that none of QRecall's components are running.

QRecall does a lot of its work in the background and with elevated privileges. To accomplish this, it installs a number of system daemons, user agents, and a privileged service.

These all appear to have been installed, but none are running. Either the macOS has failed to start them (unlikely) or something is preventing their execution. My money is on anti-virus software.

First step is to restart your system and see if they start on their own. Launch the Activity Monitor and search for QRecall. At a minimum, you should see QRecallScheduler and QRecallMonitor in the process list.

If you have anti-virus software, that could be the problem. It's always a bit of voodoo figuring out how to get around it, but in general try white-listing the QRecall or QRecallHelper process(es). You many also need to white-list the contents of Archive document or disable scanning and quarantining on the volume containing the archive.

Follow up for the forum:

James eventually performed a manual uninstall of QRecall. These steps can be found in the Help under QRecall Help > Guide > Advanced > Uninstall in "the hard way" sidebar.

He then restarted and reinstalled, and everything is running normally now.