Plex player app freezes on start-up on Mac OS X

Plex Players Desktop Players
1

Server Version#: 1.29.2.6364
Player Version#: 1.58.1.3380

Server running on Synology DS-920+ NAS with DSM 7.1.1-42962 Update 1
Player running on Mac OS X Ventura 13.0.1 (22A400)

I click on the Plex app, and all I get is a Black screen. No Plex logo suggesting the app is starting up. No menu items work. All I can do is Quit the app.

2

Which model mac do you have? Do you have default screen resolution or set to something else?

There was a similar issue with older AMD CPU’s on older “trashcan” Mac Pros for UI. For that need to edit the plex.ini file in ~/Library/Application Support/Plex can add the line disableGPU=1 to the [General] section which should be at top of the file then restart the app. This would only affect the UI, not playback.

3

I should clarify that this is a recurring but intermittent problem. It seems to depend mostly on the version of Plex. I can’t recall every version that has caused this problem, but certainly the most recent update that I did brings this issue. I have successfully used the Plex app on my laptop in the past, it’s just not working now.

I have a 13" 2017 Macbook Pro with 3.1 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 and 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3.

I did edit the plex.ini file as you suggested, but the problem persists. I tried restarting the laptop, and the problem persists after the plex.ini edit.

4

Does anything get logged (https://support.plex.tv/articles/windows-mac-app-logs/)?

5

Ah thanks for that, I was in System Library and there were no logs, but in the user library I found this:
ERROR - [Web] [Connections] All connections to [Loopback] failed

So Plex doesn’t resolve an internal IP if I’m accessing the Plex app on my local network?

6

Cherry-picking a single line out of the logs is insufficient to diagnose anything. Even if it were the issue (which this isn’t), it’s almost always useless without the context of the rest of the file. We really need the whole file to do anything.

7

Well it wasn’t clear you wanted the full log until now, you could have just asked :slight_smile: Your question was IF anything got logged, btw… and yes it did get logged to answer your question.

Nonetheless, I’ve attached the log…

Look forward to your suggestion to resolve the issue…

Plex.1.log (75.9 KB)

8

So the logs didn’t indicate any issues. You said that certain versions exhibit the issue but others do not. Do you recall the last version that worked for you?

9

Is there a way to find out which version I had just prior to my latest update? It worked just prior to the latest update I did, but I don’t know if I skipped a version that might have been released before this most recent update.

10

Not sure if this is material, but I have also deleted the app, restarted, and re-installed a clean Plex app version several times, and the problem persists.

11

Are there old version of Plex that I could try to install?

12

I think there’s an explanation and a few links to older versions in that post by nibbles

Edit

I apologize, I saw mac several times and I thought that’s what your server was running on
Disregard

13

I think I figured it out, and determined why it’s apparently so intermittent… hopefully an easy bug to fix on your next Mac app release.

It turns out even when I do not have my external monitor attached to my Macbook, the Plex app tries to run on that external monitor if it was last exited while still in full screen mode.

Here’s how I replicated the problem:

  1. Open Plex app
  2. Drag Plex app window to connected external monitor
  3. Click on full screen while the Plex app is running on the external monitor — this black screens my Macbook’s Retina display which I can switch away from if I switch focused applications; and it maximizes the Plex app on my external monitor in full screen mode.
  4. Plex app works as usual
  5. I can quit the Plex app; re-open and it works as expected on my external monitor.
  6. Now, if I disconnect my external monitor and just use my Macbook’s Retina display; other applications I run recognize that just happened and automatically move all the application windows to the Retina display. However, the Plex app does not do so if it was exitted last while in full screen mode.
  7. So if I last exitted the Plex app while running the main window on an external monitor in full screen mode, when I re-open the Plex app when I’m not using an external monitor, all I see is the Black screen and no Plex app which is presumably running somewhere in imaginary land.
  8. If I reconnect my external monitor, un-“full screen” the Plex app, quit Plex while it is still running on my external monitor, disconnect my external monitor, then re-open Plex, it opens just fine on my Retina display.
  9. The combo of running full-screen on an external monitor is the problem.

So I can work around this, but that seems to be a bug IMHO.

Enabling all the basic Mac OS X window commands like “Move to Retina display” would do the trick.

Screenshot 2022-11-30 at 21.33.03
Screenshot 2022-11-30 at 21.33.031212×490 34.5 KB

Or never allow Plex app to open in full screen mode by default. Or create a setting to select whether the user wants to open in full screen mode by default. Any of the above will work.

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