Arduino 1.8.8. crashes on startup, Mac OS 10.11.6

Just downloaded the app, so I could experiment with a stepper motor controller.

App quits immediately after startup. Couldn't find a reference in the troubleshooting guide, or by searching (earlier post I found referenced an older version, and suggested trashing the "library_index.json" file. I tried that, no change.

This is the crash report:

Process: Arduino [56997]
Path: /Users/USER/Downloads/Arduino.app/Contents/MacOS/Arduino
Identifier: cc.arduino.Arduino
Version: 1.8.8 (1.8.8)
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: ??? [1]
Responsible: Arduino [56997]
User ID: 501

Date/Time: 2018-12-27 21:31:13.738 -0500
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.11.6 (15G22010)
Report Version: 11
Anonymous UUID: 26AD0DE5-FDBE-2139-BFC3-E3D15CAF9393

Sleep/Wake UUID: E7A9F63B-9664-4352-AF26-A3CC6B7A356F

Time Awake Since Boot: 490000 seconds
Time Since Wake: 11000 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread: 0 AppKit Thread Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note: EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[NSApplicationAWT setAutomaticCustomizeTouchBarMenuItemEnabled:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fc8e97525d0'
terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException
abort() called

Any suggestions?

The problem is that Arduino IDE 1.8.8 has a bug that makes it incompatible with any macOS version older than 10.12:

This bug has already been fixed but a new release has not been made since that time. For now, you should use Arduino IDE 1.8.7, which you can download here:

Aha. Thank you. I'll use 1.8.7 then :smiley:

You're welcome. I'm glad if I was able to be of assistance. Enjoy!
Per

There is another potential issue that can cause this crash: if you unzip the package using a third party app, for example, the installed package will have your user ownership and permissions. This might prevent it from launching processes (if your mac is properly secured).

To get around this, unzip in terminal using "sudo" command, so the app will have proper ownership (root) and permissions:

  1. Make sure the downloaded .zip file is in your ~/Downloads folder
  2. Delete the app from /Applications
  3. Unzip again using root privileges:

Open terminal app, run these commands:

cd /Applications
sudo unzip ~/Downloads/arduino-1.8.8-macosx.zip

enter your user password (assuming you have admin privileges on mac) when sudo prompts you

xenon129:
There is another potential issue that can cause this crash: if you unzip the package using a third party app, for example, the installed package will have your user ownership and permissions. This might prevent it from launching processes (if your mac is properly secured).

To get around this, ....

Hi, I'd today the same problem, the program chrashes short time after showing the main window.

I tried this

cd /Applications
sudo unzip ~/Downloads/arduino-1.8.8-macosx.zip

without any success.

BTW where are the header-files like arduino.h?
As I understand that stuff should come with the download.
But nothing happened. No folder, nothing really nothing. Just the Arduino program and nothing else.

Do you have interests for the crash report? Let me know.

Regards
Hubert

Batucada:
BTW where are the header-files like arduino.h?

There is actually a different version of the core library files like Arduino.h in the hardware package for each board architecture (e.g., AVR, SAMD, SAM, ESP8266). The Arduino IDE comes with a copy of the Arduino AVR Boards core library bundled at hardware/arduino/avr/cores/arduino. When you install a different hardware package via Tools > Board > Boards Manager, or even update to a different version of Arduino AVR Boards, those packages are installed to a different location on your computer. You can find that folder at the line following File > Preferences > More preferences can be edited directly in the file. The hardware packages are installed to the packages subfolder.

Batucada:
Do you have interests for the crash report? Let me know.

Yes, please.

I have the same problem as husseinholland (i.e., "Arduino 1.8.8. crashes on startup, Mac OS 10.11.6".) Thank you for the report and the answer. It frankly stumped me for much longer than I'm willing to admit.

--j

PS I wonder how long it typically takes for a bug like this be fixed? It has been ~2.5 month since husseinholland reported the bug. (Not a critique, I'm just curious. After all, it has been holidays during this time.)

I should note that the bug was fixed two days after it was first reported. The trouble is that there has not been a production release of the Arduino IDE since that fix was made.

The Arduino developers tend to be very conservative about what they consider a serious enough bug to trigger a production IDE release. I questioned them about this some time ago and they explained that there is a time consuming process of validating the IDE before they can make the release. It's clear that they don't consider this bug serious enough to trigger a release, otherwise it would have happened 3 months ago. It may be that they don't feel it affects a very significant number of users. Not being a Mac user, I don't have any feel for how prevalent the use of the pre-10.12 macOS versions is. Another factor may be that there is an easy workaround of using Arduino IDE 1.8.7 available. If the IDE was broken for pre-10.12 macOS versions, with no workaround, I suspect that would change the equation. So I think the IDE release will wait until it accumulates enough new development work for them to feel it worthy of a new release, or until a critical bug (or collection of less serious bugs) forces their hand.