Plex Desktop crashes on macOS Sequoia when external monitor is switched off

Plex Players
1

Environment

  • Server Version: 1.41.7.9823
  • Player Version: 1.110.0.351-4e48eb83
  • OS: macOS 15.0 (Sequoia) – build 26.0.1
  • Hardware: Apple Silicon (Mac16,10)

Summary

Plex Desktop for macOS consistently crashes when an external display is powered off or disconnected. The issue appears to be related to OpenGL context loss during display reconfiguration.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Launch Plex Desktop on macOS Sequoia.
  2. Begin playback or leave the app idle with the window visible.
  3. Turn off or disconnect the external monitor (or let the display sleep).
  4. Within seconds, Plex quits unexpectedly.

Expected Behavior

Plex should gracefully handle display loss, suspending rendering until the display is restored.

Actual Behavior

Plex aborts immediately, producing a SIGABRT (`EXC_CRASH`) with the following top stack frames:

__assert_rtn

CGSWindowUnlockBackingWriter

SLSUnlockWindowBits

-[NSOpenGLContext flushBuffer]

Analysis

  • The crash originates in Apple’s SkyLight / OpenGL frameworks.
  • It occurs when Plex attempts to flush an OpenGL drawable tied to a now-invalid window surface after the display has been detached or powered down.
  • This behavior is new in macOS 15 Sequoia, which changed display reconfiguration handling.
  • Plex’s Qt-based OpenGL context likely needs to be suspended when no active drawable is available.

Additional Notes

Crash report shows `Crashed Thread: 0 (CrBrowserMain)` and termination reason `Abort trap: 6`.

The issue is reproducible every time the monitor is switched off while Plex Desktop is open.

2

Exact same thing is happening to me too but I am on Tahoe currently (it was happening on Sequioa too).

3

This is still happening on 26.1

4

+1 for this issue.

I am using a Mac Mini M4 2024 on Tahoe 26.1, Plex 1.112.0.359-0d79a49f and as soon as my device enters sleep mode (along with the external monitor), Plex crashes.

5

Exact same thing happening to me. I just bought a Mac Mini and it’s taken my entire PMS offline. Hoping for a fix soon.

6

exactly the same problem here with another new Mac mini running Tahoe 26.1. Plex Desktop crashes as soon as external monitor goes to sleep. PMS running on another Mac (intel silicone)