After updating to macOS 15.4 WezTerm crashes on launch if PopClip is running.
One has to exclude WezTerm from PopClip to make it work again. This wasn’t happening before the OS update. Any ideas about what is causing this?
Whenever an app launches, PopClip makes some Accessibility API calls against it to see if it has Cut, Copy and Paste menu bar items. This supports PopClip’s process for appearing automatically in that app when you select text with the mouse. When an app is on PopClip’s excluded list, however, it won’t do this API call.
It sounds like WezTerm (looks cool btw) may have a bug which is being triggered by PopClip’s use of the Accessibility API to probe it at launch. Apps should not normally crash like this but since developers don’t typically test against all aspects of Accessibility API usage it is more common for hidden bugs to exist there.
In my experience, such crashes seem to be more common in cross-platform apps that don’t typically use all the Apple built in AppKit components which handle Accessibility stuff automatically.
Regarding the 15.4 aspect – it’s a mystery, but sometimes Apple makes changes to macOS internals where something that didn’t crash before crashes now.
A little update: I tezted Wezterm (20240203-110809-5046fc22) on a machine running 15.4 and it didn’t crash with PopClip running.
Are there any crash logs in Console app for WezTerm?
Hmmm… that’s interesting… First of all I want to clarify, when I said crash I meant freeze, I’m sorry… because it won’t close itself, but it goes 100% CPU and beachball spinning and I have to force quit it. In any case, I’m checking WezTerm logs (supposedly at $HOME/.local/share/wezterm) and I got nothing.
I did however, check macOS console while launching with PopClip running and WezTerm not excluded, and all I could find was these fault messages:
| ault | 10:37:41.738645-0600 | wezterm-gui | delegate_identifier:Performance Diagnostics__:::__message:This method should not be called on the main thread as it may lead to UI unresponsiveness. |
|---|---|---|---|
| fault | 10:37:41.738682-0600 | wezterm-gui | delegate_identifier:Performance Diagnostics__:::__message:This method should not be called on the main thread as it may lead to UI unresponsiveness. |
| fault | 10:37:41.738739-0600 | wezterm-gui | delegate_identifier:Performance Diagnostics__:::__message:This method should not be called on the main thread as it may lead to UI unresponsiveness. |
| fault | 10:37:41.738815-0600 | wezterm-gui | delegate_identifier:Performance Diagnostics__:::__message:This method should not be called on the main thread as it may lead to UI unresponsiveness. |
| fault | 10:37:41.739958-0600 | wezterm-gui | delegate_identifier:Performance Diagnostics__:::__message:This method should not be called on the main thread as it may lead to UI unresponsiveness. |
So it might be on WezTerm’s side…