Thanks a lot for your fast reaction on my feedback, @CodySchrank, and sorry for that bit of delay in responding myself (I'm quite busy with work right now, too).

First of all, here's the feedback to your questions:

Can you expand on this? Does gfxCardStatus work at all for your machine? I was under the impression that the older machines now have to log out in order to switch to a different card?

Yes, gfxCardStatus actually did work on my 17" MacBook Pro mid-2009 from the time I started using it (with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or OS X 10.9 Mavericks) up to (and including) macOS 10.12 Sierra.

A few words on this particular MacBook Pro itself: The last OS version for the machine officially supported by Apple was OS X 10.11 El Capitan. For the upgrades to macOS 10.12 Sierra and macOS 10.13 High Sierra I used Colin Mistr's excellent macOS Sierra Patcher Tool rsp. macOS High Sierra Patcher Tool. This results in OS installations working completely flawlessly (mac OS 10.12 Sierra) in comparison to the last officially supported OS version or at least with only minor flaws (mac OS 10.13 High Sierra w/ sometimes unreliable hibernation and loss of the ability to switch GPUs on the fly using gfxCardStatus). Forum discussion to Colin's tools are taking place mainly on the MacRumors forums.

As far as gfxCardStatus and later OS X/macOS versions (i.e. OS X 10.11 El Capitan or macOS 10.12 Sierra) are concerned, I had to switch from Cody Krieger's original 2.3 release to the 2.4.4i binaries of Steve Schow's gfxCardStatus fork.

You're basically right that you have to log out on the older machines in order to switch from one GPU to the other, if you only use the features provided by Apple's OS - but: On my mid-2009 MacBook Pro, gfxCardStatus was nonetheless able to switch between GPUs on the fly up to macOS 10.12 Sierra: If you chose the other, currently inactive GPU in gfxCardStatus Finder bar icon's menu, the switch was done on the fly within perhaps two or three seconds without the need to log out. AFAIK, the background for this is that nVidia's GPUs actually were able to switch from one to the other on the fly and that Apple just hadn't software-implemented the feature for the mid-2009 MacBook Pro generation. That's what I've read, I'm sure Cody Krieger can give you more detailed and in-depth info on this.

Could you try launching with discrete selected?
/Applications/gSwitch.app/Contents/MacOS/gSwitch --discrete

No problem - this is the output of gSwitch 1.7.8 when launched with the --discrete parameter:

bash-3.2$ ./gSwitch --discrete
14:14:11.709 💙 INFO GPUManager.connect():78 - Successfully connected
14:14:11.709 💜 VERBOSE AppDelegate.applicationDidFinishLaunching():68 - App Startup set as 1
14:14:11.709 💜 VERBOSE AppDelegate.applicationDidFinishLaunching():69 - Use Last State set as 1
14:14:11.709 💜 VERBOSE AppDelegate.applicationDidFinishLaunching():70 - Saved GPU State set as 1
14:14:11.709 💜 VERBOSE AppDelegate.applicationDidFinishLaunching():71 - GPU Change notifications set as 1
14:14:11.709 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.setGPUNames():46 - Integrated: Unknown
14:14:11.709 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.setGPUNames():47 - Discrete: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
14:14:11.709 💙 INFO GPUListener.listen():33 - Listening
14:14:11.710 💚 DEBUG AppDelegate.applicationDidFinishLaunching():91 - Discrete passed in
14:14:11.710 💙 INFO GPUManager.GPUMode():126 - Requesting discrete
14:14:11.710 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.setGPUState():220 - Modified state with EnableFeatureORFeatureInfo2
14:14:11.710 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.setGPUState():220 - Modified state with SwitchPolicy
14:14:11.710 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.setGPUState():220 - Modified state with GpuSelect
14:14:12.713 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.setGPUState():220 - Modified state with GpuSelect
14:14:12.713 💙 INFO AppDelegate.safeDiscreteOnly():190 - Set Force Discrete
14:14:12.714 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.getGPUState():255 - Successfully got state, count 1, value 1
14:14:12.714 💙 INFO GPUManager.CheckGPUStateAndisUsingIntegratedGPU():171 - NOTIFY: checkGPUState ~ Checking GPU...
14:14:12.728 💙 INFO ProcessManager.updateProcessMenuList():58 - UPDATE: Polling for hungry processes
14:14:12.728 💙 INFO AppDelegate.setupUpdater():232 - Started updater
14:14:12.728 💛 WARNING StatusMenuController.changeGPUNameInMenu():137 - Can't change gpu name in menu, Current GPU Unknown
14:14:13.258 💙 INFO GPUListener.displayCallback():42 - NOTIFY: checkForHungryProcesses ~ for menu update
14:14:13.258 💙 INFO ProcessManager.updateProcessMenuList():58 - UPDATE: Polling for hungry processes
14:14:13.258 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.getGPUState():255 - Successfully got state, count 1, value 0
14:14:13.258 💙 INFO GPUManager.CheckGPUStateAndisUsingIntegratedGPU():171 - NOTIFY: checkGPUState ~ Checking GPU...
14:14:13.258 💙 INFO GPUListener.displayCallback():42 - NOTIFY: checkForHungryProcesses ~ for menu update
14:14:13.287 💙 INFO ProcessManager.updateProcessMenuList():58 - UPDATE: Polling for hungry processes
14:14:13.288 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.getGPUState():255 - Successfully got state, count 1, value 0
14:14:13.288 💙 INFO GPUManager.CheckGPUStateAndisUsingIntegratedGPU():171 - NOTIFY: checkGPUState ~ Checking GPU...
14:14:13.288 💙 INFO GPUListener.displayCallback():42 - NOTIFY: checkForHungryProcesses ~ for menu update
14:14:13.297 💙 INFO ProcessManager.updateProcessMenuList():58 - UPDATE: Polling for hungry processes
14:14:13.316 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.getGPUState():255 - Successfully got state, count 1, value 0
14:14:13.316 💙 INFO GPUManager.CheckGPUStateAndisUsingIntegratedGPU():171 - NOTIFY: checkGPUState ~ Checking GPU...
14:14:13.317 💙 INFO GPUListener.displayCallback():57 - Dedicated Graphics Card Called
14:14:13.317 💙 INFO GPUListener.displayCallback():42 - NOTIFY: checkForHungryProcesses ~ for menu update
14:14:13.317 💙 INFO ProcessManager.updateProcessMenuList():58 - UPDATE: Polling for hungry processes
14:14:13.317 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.getGPUState():255 - Successfully got state, count 1, value 0
14:14:13.317 💙 INFO GPUManager.CheckGPUStateAndisUsingIntegratedGPU():171 - NOTIFY: checkGPUState ~ Checking GPU...
14:14:13.338 💛 WARNING StatusMenuController.changeGPUNameInMenu():137 - Can't change gpu name in menu, Current GPU Unknown
14:14:13.338 💛 WARNING StatusMenuController.changeGPUNameInMenu():137 - Can't change gpu name in menu, Current GPU Unknown
14:14:13.339 💛 WARNING StatusMenuController.changeGPUNameInMenu():137 - Can't change gpu name in menu, Current GPU Unknown
14:14:13.339 💛 WARNING StatusMenuController.changeGPUNameInMenu():137 - Can't change gpu name in menu, Current GPU Unknown
14:14:14.310 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.getGPUState():255 - Successfully got state, count 1, value 0
14:14:14.310 💛 WARNING StatusMenuController.changeGPUNameInMenu():137 - Can't change gpu name in menu, Current GPU Unknown
14:14:14.310 💙 INFO GPUManager.CheckGPUStateAndisUsingIntegratedGPU():171 - NOTIFY: checkGPUState ~ Checking GPU...
14:14:14.310 💜 VERBOSE GPUListener.displayCallback():74 - NOTIFY: GPU maybe Changed
14:14:31.483 💙 INFO GPUViewController.viewWillDraw():23 - Menu was opened
14:14:31.492 💙 INFO ProcessManager.updateProcessMenuList():58 - UPDATE: Polling for hungry processes
14:14:37.619 💙 INFO GPUViewController.discardCursorRects():28 - Menu was closed
14:14:37.619 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.getGPUState():255 - Successfully got state, count 1, value 0
14:14:37.619 💙 INFO GPUManager.CheckGPUStateAndisUsingIntegratedGPU():171 - NOTIFY: checkGPUState ~ Checking GPU...
14:14:37.619 💙 INFO GPUManager.GPUMode():119 - Requesting integrated, are we integrated?  false
14:14:37.620 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.setGPUState():220 - Modified state with GpuSelect
14:14:38.619 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.setGPUState():220 - Modified state with ForceSwitch
14:14:38.619 💙 INFO AppDelegate.safeIntergratedOnly():173 - Set Force Integrated
14:14:38.622 💛 WARNING StatusMenuController.changeGPUNameInMenu():137 - Can't change gpu name in menu, Current GPU Unknown
14:14:45.864 💙 INFO GPUViewController.viewWillDraw():23 - Menu was opened
14:14:45.873 💙 INFO ProcessManager.updateProcessMenuList():58 - UPDATE: Polling for hungry processes
14:14:48.019 💙 INFO GPUViewController.discardCursorRects():28 - Menu was closed

Things noticable to me:

With gSwitch 1.7.8, the Finder bar icon now appears normally. Its menu still lists the GPU as 'unknown' and the setting at launch is on 'Discrete Only'.
The attempt to switch from discrete to integrated GPU only changes the checkmark from 'Discrete Only' to 'Integrated Only', but obviously no switch of GPUs is taking place. When I check the GPUs' activity with gfxCardStatus, it still reports the discrete GPU to be the active one after the switch.
In these two lines of the log, the integrated and discrete GPU seem to be mixed up (the 9400M is the MBP's integrated GPU and the 9600M GT is the discrete GPU):

14:14:11.709 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.setGPUNames():46 - Integrated: Unknown
14:14:11.709 💜 VERBOSE GPUManager.setGPUNames():47 - Discrete: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M

If I can do more testing, please just let me know. I'd be more than happy to contribute to gSwitch by testing, if it helps to remove these somewhat artifical flaws from otherwise still completely decent working machines like the MacBook Pro mid-2009 generation.

Does this app work for macbooks older than 2011? #12

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