I cannot get Keyboard Maestro to start. It just freezes. Locks up and I can't do anything. Even after restarting/killing processes. Does anybody know how to fix this? I paid good money for this software to just have it completely stop working like this.
Hey @Parker,
You haven’t told us enough to help you.
What version of Keyboard Maestro?
What version of macOS?
What do you mean by start it?
Do you mean start the editor, or do you mean start the engine?
Have you downloaded and reinstalled the keyboard Maestro application?
Have you looked at the editor and engine logs? (I’m away from my Mac at the moment or I’d give you the paths.)
How long of you been using Keyboard Maestro, and approximately how many macros do you have?
In any case - Keyboard Maestro freezing is a rarity.
Hopefully your issue is something simple, because remote troubleshooting is rarely any fun.
-Chris
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Hey @Parker,
Here are the log files.
~/Library/Logs/Keyboard Maestro/Editor.log
~/Library/Logs/Keyboard Maestro/Engine.log
You can open them with the Console or with BBEdit (or another text editor).
-Chris
Also, use the Activity Monitor to get a sample of the application that is freezing (Keyboard Maestro or Keyboard Maestro Engine) which will tell me where it is actually freezing.
I'm going to guess a corrupted sql file, but there is not enough information to know for sure (I have have very occasional reports of freezes which turn out to be corrupted sql files, hence the guess, and which makes me glad that the macros are not stored in an sql file).
OS X El Capitan 10.11.6
No idea what version of keyboard maestro because I can do nothing in the application because it freezes.
I don't know how to start the engine by itself. Whenever I launch the editor the editor locks up completely.
I have tried a fresh install and it doesn't work.
Not sure where engine or editor logs are or how they would help me.
I have 6 or 7 macros and use it daily.
Sampling process 8954 for 3 seconds with 1 millisecond of run time between samples
Sampling completed, processing symbols...
Analysis of sampling Keyboard Maestro (pid 8954) every 1 millisecond
Process: Keyboard Maestro [8954]
Path: /Applications/Keyboard Maestro.app/Contents/MacOS/Keyboard Maestro
Load Address: 0x10d158000
Identifier: com.stairways.keyboardmaestro.editor
Version: 8.2.4 (8.2.4)
Code Type: X86-64
Parent Process: ??? [1]
Date/Time: 2019-02-18 09:45:48.589 -0800
Launch Time: 2019-02-18 09:45:07.795 -0800
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.11.6 (15G22010)
Report Version: 7
Analysis Tool: /usr/bin/sample
You can select the Keyboard Maestro application in the Finder and use File ➤ Get Info to get the information.
The sample turned out to indicate that it was frozen in code from a SIMBL (system/application enhancer hack system) extension called Afloat. So if anyone has any freezes with Keyboard Maestro, check the folder:
/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/
and see if you have anything there. SIMBL is very clever, but it is also a complete hack, so if you install it, pretty much all bets are off as far as stability goes for your Mac.
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Thank you for the additional information about SIMBL. I was using afloat for a while, but stopped using it so getting rid of SIMBL/Afloat isn't a big issue. Thanks again!
I think it may be. Not using it doesn't reduce its impact. Once it's been installed, components of it will continue to be auto-loaded by the system.
You will need to find out how to thoroughly uninstall it, root and branch.