Plex Mac app (Plex.app) closes on startup without a window

[jellofishi]

Server Version#: 1.18.7.2457
Player Version#:1.7.0.1033-7d8b78ca

As per the notification that the Plex media player app will no longer have a desktop mode, and the suggestion to download the Plex.app I did.

Attempting to start the app, the icon bounces and then nothing. no window. the application closes (no dot on the dock indicating the application is running)

Where do I start looking for clues ? Tried ~/Library/Logs/Plex/ but that has no error messages.

2020-03-04T22:40:11.682 [ INFO ] Starting Plex version: 1.6.3.1009-57cf57c8
2020-03-04T22:40:11.683 [ INFO ] Running on: macOS 10.15 [19.3.0] x86_64
2020-03-04T22:40:11.683 [ INFO ] Happy Plexing!
2020-03-04T22:40:11.820 [ INFO ] [Settings] Restoring defaults.
2020-03-04T22:40:11.820 [ INFO ] [NanoServer] Starting nano server.
2020-03-04T22:40:11.820 [ DEBUG ] [RealNanoServer] Setting app support dir to /Users/tlailax/Library/Application Support/Plex
2020-03-04T22:40:11.820 [ INFO ] [NanoServer] Found available port: 32700
2020-03-04T22:40:11.820 [ INFO ] [NanoServer] Changing nano server port from 0 to 32700.
2020-03-04T22:40:11.820 [ DEBUG ] [RealNanoServer] Setting listener port to 32700
2020-03-04T22:40:11.820 [ DEBUG ] [RealNanoServer] Setting environment up.

[nachtalb]

I had the exact same problem as you. Message bla bla not support anymore > hit download the new one and the “Plex.app” crashed before it opened a window.

I removed it again and now several days later I redownloaded the app from here and now it worked. Why? … I don’t know. But maybe they had uploaded the wrong file or something. Because In your log it says version 1.6.... and not as written above it 1.7.....

I also run the same Plex Server version so I don’t think that this is a problem either.

[deactivated]

@jellofishi, @nachtalb we found an error in 1.7 after release then quickly rolled back. You’ll need to delete Plex.app and re-install 1.6.3 from https://www.plex.tv/media-server-downloads/#plex-app.

[jellofishi]

Update:

Manage to debug and fix. For others, here was the process:

To get access to the error, open a terminal and run the executable in the Plex.app directly:

/Applications/Plex.app/Contents/MacOS/Plex

For me this displayed the error message that Plex failed to write to the following folder due to permission errors:

~/Library/Application Support/Plex

for some reason the ownership of this folder was set to ‘root’.

change the permission of the folder

chown -R your_user_name_here Plex

and Plex.app started fine.