The app closes after a while

[FezVrasta]

Before opening the issue, have you...?

• Searched for existing issues
• Looked through the wiki
• Updated MonitorControl to the latest version (if applicable)

Describe the bug

After I start the app, it can work for days, but eventually it automatically closes without reporting any error.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open the app
2. Keep it open for days

Expected behavior

The app should never stop if not asked to

Anything else?

No response

Environment Information (please complete the following information)

- macOS version: Monterey
- Mac model: MBP 2021 M1 max
- MonitorControl version: 4.0.2
- Monitor(s): LG 34WK95U
- Apple Silicon/M1 (yes or no): yes

[waydabber]

It should not stop indeed. Probably something is messed up and is crashed. Might need some console/crash logs to see what happens. https://support.apple.com/guide/console/reports-cnsl664be99a/mac

[FezVrasta]

Here there are 3 crash reports

Archive.zip

[waydabber]

Indeed, there seems to be a recurring issue on this config. The exception type seems to indicate that somehow the crash is intentional as some circumstance arises when the system thinks it would not be prudent to continue.

Do you have XCode? The best would be to pull the code and run the app from XCode and wait for the crash to occur - when it does, XCode will show where the crash is happening and what are the circumstances as the exact reason is not apparent from the crash file unfortunately.

[FezVrasta]

Thanks for the investigation, I do have XCode but I never used it, also, considered it can take days before the app crashes it would mean I would have to run that behemoth of an IDE for way too long 😢

Do you think you could improve the logging so that the next time it crashes more useful logs will be generated?

[FezVrasta]

Just for completeness, for now I found a workaround:

Add this to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/MonitorControl.restart.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true />
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <true />
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>MonitorControl.restart</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <string>/Applications/MonitorControl.app/Contents/MacOS/MonitorControl</string>
    </array>
  </dict>
</plist>

Then enable it with launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/MonitorControl.restart.plist

This way anytime the app crashes it's automatically restarted.

[waydabber]

Nice solution. :)

Well you might gather more info on what is happening by checking the console and see if MontiorControl was trying to do something in particular:

#851

To make a crash report more helpful we'd need to symbolicate it. It might be that @JoniVR can do this as he built the actual release version and he might have the release in his XCode Organizer preserved. If not, then the crash logs are not very useful anymore as for symbolication you need the original dSYM file which contains the required info for debugging and figuring out what's what in the crash log. But if not, then you can do it as well (you do not have to run XCode continually, just need XCode to build the app and then use it to make the crash log human readable afterwards, for a quick tutorial see this: https://daveceddia.com/manually-symbolicate-crash-log-macos-app/), or we can build a new version and then wait for it to crash on your mac and then check the crash log against that version.

[waydabber]

I'll close this one due to inactivity. If there is any new info please let me know!