Brave crashing constantly on launch

Started this conversation on a different thread this morning - re-posting here with a macos tag.

This is happening to me every time - Brave will launch and then crash immediately. I have the following Mac OS/browser configuration: Mac OS 10.15.5 (19F101). Brave Browser Version 1.10.90 Chromium: 83.0.4103.97 (Official Build) (64-bit)

I read a few posts here on the same subject and had an inkling that Rewards was the culprit.

My solution was to go into the folder ~Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/ then find the directory /rewards_service and then I put a hash in front of the directory name and re-launched the browser from the Dock (keeping that Finder window open so I could see what was going on). I suspected the hash would force the application to generate a new directory.

Brave launched, a new rewards_service directory was created on launch and the browser didn’t crash. I then binned the hashed directory.

Caveat: I have never activated the Brave Rewards thing, I have no data stored against it so no potential loss to me.

EDIT: Just crashed again - that was only a partial success dammit. I’m re-posting this with a Mac tag to see if anyone else has an idea.

Mine is worse. Woke up this morning and can’t even open it. Restarted my computer. Nope.
Totally ruined and I can’t even export my bookmarks. I would uninstall and reinstall, but I don’t want to lose all my bookmarks. This is totally messed up. What a terrible company. I’m beginning to REGRET switching from Firefox to this rubbish.

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Sad, 18 hours after you post this no reply from the company or anyone.
Lame.

Thanks for your support. Yep, this situation is singularly rubbish.

Back to Safari it is then.

I had the same problem yesterday morning. Brave browser would just open, then immediately close. So I uninstalled and reinstalled the browser. It worked, BUT I lost all my BAT. I found my backup recovery code from December 2019. So I lost 7 months of earned BAT. Is there any way I can recover the rest??

Hi @blam - Thanks a bunch for reporting your issue, and for your patience. A couple of questions to better understand what might be happening:

  • Do you have crash reports enabled? If so, would you be willing to share a crash ID?

  • Is Sync enabled on your computer?

Thank you in advance for any additional info!

Hi steeven,

I think I had crash reports enabled - however I can’t access the browser to supply a crash ID from the Prefs - and Sync was definitely not enabled.

Yesterday I downloaded a new .dmg installer and reinstalled the browser (version 83.1.10.93), restarted the Mac (reset the NVRAM) and was able to use the Brave for the rest of the working day.

This morning it’s repeating the same behaviour, and crashes immediately after being launched.

When attempting to open the browser I have the /Default directory open in the Finder, sorted by Date Modified, and the last (first) directory listed after every attempt to launch is /rewards_service

@steeven Update: I followed the advice in this post on another macos thread @nanni61

I moved the /Brave-Browser folder to my desktop and launched Brave. It opened up and behaved normally - naturally none of my bookmarks and prefs were present.

Interestingly - by way of experiment - I quit the browser and then moved my desktop copy of /Brave-Browser back into its original parent folder (overwriting the new vanilla one generated by opening Brave a few seconds before) then relaunched the browser. It opened normally and all my bookmarks and prefs were present.

Baffling. Now I’m back in, can you tell me where I can find the crash ID you requested?

Hi @blam - thanks a bunch for the additional info!

Can you try disabling Hardware Acceleration in settings to see if this resolves the issue?

You’ll find this in Settings --> Additional Settings --> System --> Hardware Acceleration

Hi @steeven - I didn’t have Hardware Acceleration toggled on:

Hi @blam - your crash ID can be found here - brave://crashes/.

When you have a moment, if you’re able please update to the latest version as well.

@steeven I’ve disabled Hardware accel, enabled Crash reporting and here’s my version:

Which states it’s the most recent…

I relaunched the browser to implement these changes to Settings, and it immediately crashed again.

I repeated the process I described above to get Brave to launch once more: I moved the /Brave-Browser folder to my desktop, launched Brave, quit Brave them moved the folder back into /BraveSoftware overwriting the new /Brave-Browser folder created by launching just before, and launched it again. Back in business.

I’m very surprised those actions were repeatable, that’s a solid lead.

My latest Crash ID is: Uploaded Crash Report ID: 228a0000-1c55-8704-0000-000000000000

Thanks @blam! Checking with the team.

@steeven Thanks, and good luck! :grinning:

So, i got same issue after last update.
After doing some reasarch i’ve disabled sync and bg walpapers, but it keeps crashing

report has been uploades but i paste it also here a88d0000-1c55-8704-0000-000000000000

Hi @blam - turns out there was an issued filed for what you were experiencing, it can be tracked here - https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/10297. Thanks again for reporting!

Set brave://flags to default seems to solve my crashing issues on Chromium. (It also disabled sync). Hope it helped

I found a couple of work arounds but found the problem to be symptomatic that in my case I had enabled sync [brave://sync] and this occurs at the point of an update that cannot complete.

I found two work arounds both effectively disable sync the first is the worst

  1. Completely remove brave and your application support area for brave in your home directory under ~Library which contains your personal settings. Then reinstall brave , recover wallet and re-enable sync. The last step maybe not so wise.

  2. There is delay before the segmentation fault, this delay is long enough to enter and hit the URL brave://sync , hit the the page and remove the device from the sync chain. Stop and restart brave , the go to -> about brave. The latest update will then complete. Downside sync is disabled but upside you do not need to restore your wallet.

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