Troubleshooting
Brackets not working for you? Consider the following tips.
- Mac OSX 10.6 or newer.
- Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) by default will not allow Brackets to run since it's not being digitally signed yet. To work around this, right click the Brackets app and choose Open, then click Open on the dialog that appears. You only need to do that once -- afterward, launching Brackets the normal way will work also.
- Windows Vista/7.
- WinXP w/ Service Pack 2.
- You should have at least 2 GB of RAM to do Live Development.
Make sure you download one of the "brackets-sprint-XX.dmg" (Mac) or "brackets-sprint-XX.msi" (Windows) installers from the Downloads page.
Some Windows Vista computers will block installers downloaded from the Internet, so nothing at all happens when you try to run the installer. To work around this: right-click the installer file, choose Properties, and click the Unblock button.
This can happen on some Windows machines. To work around this, try executing the installer from an elevated command prompt:
- Open an elevated command prompt using one of the techniques on this page: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/783-elevated-command-prompt.html
-
cdto the folder containing the installer. - Run the installer using msiexec, e.g.:
msiexec /i "brackets-sprint-xx-WIN.msi"(where "xx" is the sprint number)
The Brackets app is not yet signed, so depending on your security settings, you might get a dialog on Lion or Mountain Lion telling you that you can't run an application from an unknown developer. If so, you'll need to Ctrl-click on the application and choose "Open", then click on the "Open" button in the dialog that comes up.
If Brackets won't launch, check the permissions of the main executable files (e.g. using ls -l). On Mac:
-
bin/mac/Brackets.appshould bedrwxr-xr-x -
bin/mac/Brackets.app/Contents/MacOS/Bracketsshould be-rwxr-xr-x
To fix permissions, use a command like chmod +x bin/mac/Brackets.app/Contents/MacOS/Brackets.
Some archiving programs, such as Keka don't appear to preserve file permissions when unarchiving zip files. (More info here). If you run into this issue on Mac, try to unarchive the zip file by using Finder.
If you had previously used Brackets, your cache may have information that is conflicting with the most recent version. Find your cache folder and delete the cache. Warning: this will reset all of your Brackets preferences.
Next, try running Brackets from the command line. Open up a Terminal (or Command Prompt in Windows), navigate to the executable, and run Brackets. (On Mac, type open bin/mac/Brackets.app.). Did an error appear? If so, file an issue or find us on IRC or the mailing list and we'll try to figure it out.
Currently, Live Development works differently for different types of files:
- For CSS, your changes are applied in the browser immediately as you type, without reloading the page.
- For HTML and JavaScript, when you save your changes, the page is reloaded to reflect your changes.
We plan to add as-you-type Live Development support for HTML and JavaScript content in the near future.
If you get the error An error occurred when launching the browser. (error 2) when doing Live Development, installing Chrome for multiple user accounts may solve the issue.
If you keep getting errors when trying to launch Chrome, or if you keep getting prompted to restart Chrome, try rebooting your machine. Rebooting has resolved many odd issues with Live Development.
Also, if you keep getting prompted to restart Chrome when switching between HTML files, make sure that you have another tab open in Chrome. This prevents Chrome from shutting down and restarting between each file, so it's much faster and smoother.
If Brackets cannot launch the Chrome browser on your Windows system, check the Registry setting here:
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\chrome.exe
This is the file path that Brackets uses to launch Chrome. If this is not correct, then try reinstalling the Chrome browser at this location.
On Windows, Brackets is not able to close and relaunch Chrome if "Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed" is enabled. This can be disabled by right-clicking in Chrome icon in Tray, or in Advanced Settings.
If Brackets opens, but behaves incorrectly, don't forget you can open the Developer Tools. Under the Debug Menu, select "Show Developer Tools" to open an instance of the Developer Tools for Brackets. If you've used the Developer Tools in Chrome this will look familiar. Ensure the Console tab is open and see if any errors show up there.
File an issue or contact us via one of the channels mentioned in the README.