I use Brave since it was released and am super happy with it (and recommend it to anyone).
A few days ago it started to crash - constantly. It was not possilbe to even see one page or the blank page.
I tried to resolve the Problem (downloading the latest version, disk utility first aid and so on) but unfortunately no difference.
I found out though that it has to do something withe the following folder:
If I delete this folder Brave starts up normally - but unfortunately all my bookmarks and everything else is gone (which is not good, because it is my sole browser I use and organize everything with).
I am using a MacBook Pro with macos 10.14.6, no addons. Other browsers and the rest of the apps are working normally.
Iâm experiencing the same problem. Brave unexpectedly quits and it continues to crash on startup until I can hit the donât reopen button fast enough. Once I do that it seems to behave until the next time I close and re-open Brave.
Mac Mini MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6
This just started a few days ago and I am not experiencing this issue on my Windows 10 machine.
When you open a private window instead of a ânormalâ window, does it stay open without crashing?
Private mode disables your extensions, and is kind of like âsafe modeâ that can help with troubleshooting.
@macman,
Can you try downloading our Beta build and see if you get the same results? Itâs interesting that deleting the directory you listed causes the app to load normally.
Once you delete it, the browser will launch and, on first launch, will also re-create that directory to store browsing data. Iâm wondering if the issue is more on the system side or the data side (that is, if you have some data stored that is causing conflict with the browser when launched).
Not to stop you from trying @Mattchesâ suggestion to use the beta build, but:
I donât have a Mac to test on, but in Windows, I can right click the icon on my taskbar and have a choice to open a private window. Do you have anything similar?
Greetings. @G2theC, right-clicking the Brave dock icon doesnât produce a result similar to the Windows task bar right-click, but (@macman@Damfino this opens an incognito window when run from Finder) one can write a simple scrip in Apple Script Editor to do it. The code is:
if application âBrave Browserâ is running then
tell application âBrave Browserâ to make new window with properties {mode:âincognitoâ}
else
do shell script âopen -a â/Applications/Brave Browser.appâ --args --incognitoâ
end if
tell application âBrave Browserâ to activate
This forum embeds format codes sometimes, so hereâs a pic of what the editor window should look like (click to enlarge):
Save that as an application by selecting Export⌠in the File menu, Application as the File Format, name it, navigate in the dialog to get where you want to save it, click Save, and drag it to your dock. Or, you could try using the one I shared here (not positive it will work as is; you may have to do the export thing):
@macman,
Can you either enable automatic crash reporting, or go to brave://crashes and use the Send now option to send crash reports to us so we can take a look on our end?
Great point â my bad, itâs been a long day
Let me reach out to some team members and get some additional input on your situation.
Also, can you tell me if you have any anti-virus or system cleaning applications that are running on your system? Anything that may (for whatever reason) be unintentionally flagging/removing that Brave directory?
I can send you the crash report from Console ⌠but where can I send it to?
No anti-virus or cleaning-apps. Nothing to remove that directory.
Crash reports are too long to post it here âŚ
Tried most things suggested; turned off Malwarebytes, downloaded the beta, created and ran the AppleScript, nothing worked. Also restarted the system. Finder says Brave last opened successfully 4:21 PM EDT today (1/10/20). macOS Catalina 10.15.2
I also tried the Applescript to select a private window, and that crashed as well. I also turned off all extensions, but no change. I see you restarted your system, I then restarted my computer and now it appears to be working fine. I wonder if this is a memory issue?
Iâll post back on if this issue crops back up.
Same issue here, impossible to launch Brave on MacOS 10.14.6.
I constantly crashes each time I launch it.
As I cannot use the UI before it crashes,I gave the command line a try and got a segmentation fault in case this helps the Brave dev team or anyone else troubleshoot this.
When either the Defaults/Bookmarks or Defaults/Preferences files get corrupted, Brave will crash on launch. Iâve been through this three times now where I had to rebuild/restore my bookmarks. The only thing that works at this point is to regularly make a backup of your bookmarks by exporting them from the bookmarks manager page, then itâs fairly simple to just re-import the bookmarks if you otherwise have to trash the Bookmarks preference file and/or all of your preferences. But if you donât have a backup of the bookmarks, itâs can be difficult to fix the bookmarks file. You have to know how to read JSON and perhaps use a language like Python as I did to evaluate and debug the JSON to find the problems in the file.
The bottom line is, when Brave crashes or quits due to a locked up web page, or for any other reason, it routinely corrupts its own Preferences and Bookmarks to the point where the app wonât launch anymore. They really need to fix this issue. In the meantime, backup your bookmarks regularly (or keep snapshot backups of your system so you can just restore the entire preferences folder from a time prior to the latest crash).
If you have some programming skills, the Bookmarks file is repairable. If you donât, you can still read the Bookmarks file contents and manually recover bookmarked URLs from it. Just drag and drop the Bookmarks file on to TextEdit and it will open as a plain text file and you can skim through it and copy URLs so you can re-bookmark them again. Extremely tedious to do manually, but if youâre not a programmer thatâs the best you can hope for.
If you do find yourself trying to manually recover data from the Default/Preferences or Default/Bookmarks files, thereâs an app called âSublimeâ which I highly recommend (google âMac Sublime Downloadâ) which is a text editor for developers, and it has some features that can make JSON more readable.
Make a safety copy of your Default/Bookmarks or Default/Preferences file
Launch Sublime.
Drag-drop the Bookmarks or Preferences file into the Sublime window
Press shift-command-P to bring up the command window
Type âindent jsonâ to filter the command list
You should see a menu item that says âIndent JSONâ - click on it
Now the JSON will have an outline format that is easier to read, and you can scroll through and find URLs or other text data to recover.
The Brave Bookmarks and Preferences files are ridiculous. This data should not be stored as JSON in a single text file.
