Wednesday, December 24, 2025

mac – Why does a macOS app crash immediately on launch despite reinstall and reverting to older version of the app?

The app TinyMediaManager, which I have used for years, today is crashing immediately on launch (i.e. within a second). I have not been able to see anyone else have these issues online, and have tried to submit a report to the developers to try to find a fix. What log files I am able to access do not seem to give much useful information that I can tell.

I have tried:

  • Reboot my computer,
  • Reinstall (I have tried 5.1.8, 5.1.6, 5.1.4) via the website and using Homebrew,
  • Deleting all files from the Application Support folder.
  • Uninstalling my local version of java/openjdk and reverting to older versions compatible (24 -> 17) and completely uninstalling it
    None of these have worked.

The app was working, up until several weeks ago (I can’t say when I last used it, though it was for sure working around May). I have to assume that either something else that I installed, or a macOS update caused something to interfere with the app, or perhaps is flagging it for security reasons. I have looked in the “Privacy & Security” section of the system settings to see if it was listed there, but it was not.

Here are the main log files I was able to find, located in $HOME/Library/Application Support/tinyMediaManager/logs:

  • tmm.log: 2025-08-19 23:39:17,809 WARN [main] o.tinymediamanager.core.AbstractSettings:258 - could not load settings - creating default ones...
  • startup.log:
2025-08-19 23:39:17,766 TRACE [main] org.tinymediamanager.TinyMediaManager:110 - entered launch
2025-08-19 23:39:17,809 DEBUG [main] o.tinymediamanager.core.AbstractSettings:242 - Loading settings (tmm.json) from /Users/riley/Library/Application Support/tinyMediaManager/data
2025-08-19 23:39:17,809 WARN  [main] o.tinymediamanager.core.AbstractSettings:258 - could not load settings - creating default ones...

I cannot understand this. As far as I can tell, it should be using its own java install so it shouldn’t be messing with my own. I was messing with java in the last few weeks, getting modded minecraft working, but I didn’t think I did anything drastic to my computer.

Final Notes:

  • macOS 15.6 on an M4 MacBook Pro.
  • tinymediamanager has a connected database that is “large” (~3tb worth of video) which is currently not connected to my macbook. The relavent metadata for this has been moved to an archive folder to try simulate fresh install.

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