On Monterey (12.6.2), on a heavily-upgraded Mac Pro 4,1, Automator reliably crashes immediately upon startup.
It did this when I was running Catalina, too, but I didn't have a need for it until lately. I only upgraded to Monterey because I wanted to run an app that wouldn't run on Catalina.
I deleted ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Automator.* — some five .plist and three .lockfile files — and it still crashes. It re-creates com.apple.Automator.plist when it re-starts (and re-crashes). There are no obvious Automator-related files in /Library/Preferences nor in /System/Library/Preferences.
Yea, this machine is old, and running Monterey is officially not supported. I used the excellent OpenCore Legacy Patcher to install Monterey, and am able to run anything else I try, including many commercial and open-source applications, as well as anything else that came from Apple.
I have another, more modern machine (MacBook Pro 11,5) running Monterey 12.6.2, and it runs Automator just fine. I copied the Automator.app from that machine to my home directory on the problem machine, and it still crashes. codesign -dv on the two apps indicates they are identical.
locate Automator | fgrep -v /Volumes | wc says there are some 46,000 files that have “Automator” in them — I really don't want to dig through that haystack!
I've used up my immediate ideas for troubleshooting this. Any thoughts about how to best get this working? Are there any particular cache files I should try deleting? Thanks!
Here is the stack dump from the crash. locate knows nothing about a file called AMProxyAction.m, which is probably a source file name.
Exception Name: NSInternalInconsistencyException
Description: Invalid parameter not satisfying: cacheDictionary
User Info: {
NSAssertFile = "AMProxyAction.m";
NSAssertLine = 146;
}
0 CoreFoundation 0x00007ff808d09e9b __exceptionPreprocess + 242
1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x00007ff808a6be48 objc_exception_throw + 48
2 Foundation 0x00007ff809aedd03 -[NSAssertionHandler handleFailureInMethod:object:file:lineNumber:description:] + 267
3 Automator 0x00007ffa26501750 -[AMProxyAction initWithDictionary:] + 275
4 Automator 0x00007ffa26505fca -[AMAppDefinitionProxyAction initWithGenericActionBundleIdentifier:applicationDefintiion:] + 162
5 Automator 0x00007ffa2656e5c6 -[AMGenericActionLoader actionsFromTigerApplicationDefinition:] + 673
6 Automator 0x00007ffa2656e75a -[AMGenericActionLoader actionsFromApplicationDefinition:] + 82
7 Automator 0x00007ffa264aa496 -[AMApplicationDefinition definedActions] + 75
8 Automator 0x00007ffa26575691 -[AMActionRegistry loadDefinitionFileActions] + 335
9 Automator 0x00007ffa264da3cb -[AMLibrary init] + 110
10 Automator 0x00007ffa264da33c +[AMLibrary sharedLibrary] + 28
11 Foundation 0x00007ff8099f2fc0 -[NSObject(NSKeyValueCoding) valueForKey:] + 307
12 Foundation 0x00007ff8099f2c09 -[NSKeyValueNestedProperty object:didAddObservance:recurse:] + 209
13 Foundation 0x00007ff8099d6fdf -[NSObject(NSKeyValueObserverRegistration) _addObserver:forProperty:options:context:] + 468
14 Foundation 0x00007ff8099d639f -[NSObject(NSKeyValueObserverRegistration) addObserver:forKeyPath:options:context:] + 118
15 AppKit 0x00007ff80b697aee -[NSAutounbinder addObserver:forKeyPath:options:context:] + 167
16 AppKit 0x00007ff80b5e617e -[NSBinder _updateObservingRegistration:] + 542
17 AppKit 0x00007ff80b5e5281 -[NSBinder establishConnection] + 244
18 AppKit 0x00007ff80b5de8d9 -[NSObject(NSKeyValueBindingCreation) bind:toObject:withKeyPath:options:] + 760
19 AppKit 0x00007ff80b5dcbbd -[NSIBObjectData nibInstantiateWithOwner:options:topLevelObjects:] + 1197
20 AppKit 0x00007ff80b657b54 -[NSNib _instantiateNibWithExternalNameTable:options:] + 656
21 AppKit 0x00007ff80b6577cf -[NSNib _instantiateWithOwner:options:topLevelObjects:] + 143
22 AppKit 0x00007ff80b657048 -[NSViewController loadView] + 335
23 Automator 0x00007ffa265203d8 -[AMLibraryViewController loadView] + 77
24 AppKit 0x00007ff80b656d99 -[NSViewController _loadViewIfRequired] + 72
25 AppKit 0x00007ff80b656d16 -[NSViewController view] + 23
26 Automator 0x000000010218e7a1 -[AMDocumentWindowController windowDidLoad] + 3073
27 AppKit 0x00007ff80b7bd0aa -[NSWindowController _windowDidLoad] + 548
28 AppKit 0x00007ff80b7b8c87 -[NSWindowController window] + 110
29 AppKit 0x00007ff80b8312c6 -[NSWindowController showWindow:] + 36
30 AppKit 0x00007ff80b7cf2dc -[NSDocument showWindows] + 116
31 AppKit 0x00007ff80bb5105d __90-[NSDocumentController(NSInternal) _autoreopenDocumentsFromRecords:withCompletionHandler:]_block_invoke.1413 + 92
32 Automator 0x000000010219ff2f __89-[AMDocumentController reopenDocumentForURL:withContentsOfURL:display:completionHandler:]_block_invoke + 49
33 AppKit 0x00007ff80bb4dc80 __89-[NSDocumentController reopenDocumentForURL:withContentsOfURL:display:completionHandler:]_block_invoke_2 + 166
34 AppKit 0x00007ff80bb564fa ___NSMainRunLoopPerformBlockInModes_block_invoke + 25
35 CoreFoundation 0x00007ff808c8ef00 __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_BLOCK__ + 12
36 CoreFoundation 0x00007ff808c8edaf __CFRunLoopDoBlocks + 443
37 CoreFoundation 0x00007ff808c8da42 __CFRunLoopRun + 878
38 CoreFoundation 0x00007ff808c8d014 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 562
39 HIToolbox 0x00007ff811daa5e6 RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 292
40 HIToolbox 0x00007ff811daa34a ReceiveNextEventCommon + 594
41 HIToolbox 0x00007ff811daa0e5 _BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInModeWithFilter + 70
42 AppKit 0x00007ff80b5fdfad _DPSNextEvent + 927
43 AppKit 0x00007ff80b5fc66a -[NSApplication(NSEvent) _nextEventMatchingEventMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 1394
44 AppKit 0x00007ff80b5eed19 -[NSApplication run] + 586
45 AppKit 0x00007ff80b5c2c97 NSApplicationMain + 817
46 dyld 0x000000010cff952e start + 462
