Cannot install Mathematica 12 on macOS Mojave. Front-End completely unresponsive

Question

I have been communicating back-and-forth with Wolfram support for a few weeks trying to figure out why I cannot use Mathematica 12 on the new MacBook Pro running the latest version of macOS Mojave. I will attach our entire conversation, and will help you guys in any way I can to help diagnose this.

Not being able to use Mathematica has been a huge pain for the last few months and would be incredibly grateful to any help you guys could give.

In the emails I reference several attachments. I have put them all here. Looking at these videos may be a good first step for you guys trying to help.

1.

On Apr 19, 2019, at 2:41 PM, Bruce Miller wrote:

resend
From: Bruce Miller <support@wolfram.com> Date: 2019-04-19 13:39 To: Max Coplan <email> Subject: RE: [CASE:4249523]
LiveChat: Cocoa integration in the frontend

Mr. Coplan,

Please feel free to attach the SystemInformation[] notebook and Profiler output to a reply to this email.

I will get these to developers and get back to you.

Best regards,

Bruce Miller Wolfram Technical Support Wolfram Research, Inc. http://support.wolfram.com/
On: 2019-04-19 17:52:51 email,
email submitted the following Case:

Max Coplan: Question I am having trouble using Mathematica 12, presumably related to the new Cocoa integration in the frontend. I cannot click in notebooks, I cannot type in them, and I cannot scroll.
Allison: Hello. Thank you for contacting Wolfram Research Customer Service.
Max Coplan: hey Max Coplan: Have you heard about any similar problems to what I described?
Allison: Our technical support staff would be better able to assist you with this. May I please have your license number, or activation key, so I can get you the correct contact information for them?
Max Coplan: sure
Max Coplan: It's just that I just installed the newest version of Mathematica but cannot even open it :(
Max Coplan: license number

Allison: This shows to be the student site license for University. It will take me just a moment to get you connected to our technical support team. May I have your email address in case we get disconnected? Max Coplan: email is my Wolfram id email

2.

Max: P.S. That open permission dialogue was from me trying to install Mathematica 11.3. It had nothing to do with 12

3.

Max: Downgrading to version 11.3 fixed the issue, so it’s something with version 12.

4.

Max: Figuring it may have something to do with the more complex graphics libraries, I rebooting into Safe Mode to see what would happen if those were disabled, as well as disabled all my startup items, etc. Safe Mode did not do anything

5.

On May 10, 2019, at 11:02 PM, Wolfram Technical Support <support@wolfram.com> wrote:
Mr. Coplan,

Thank you for the files.

A developer asks,

if you modified system libraries,

if Mathematica present in the list of apps in Security & Privacy -> Privacy -> Accessibility ,

and if this is just Untitled-1 or more general.

He said the behavior is consistent with 10.14 system libraries which Mathematica does not use.

Regards,

Bruce Miller Wolfram Technical Support Wolfram Research, Inc. http://support.wolfram.com/

6.

Max: Thank you for your help!

I don’t know if I’ve done that, so probably not. I have SIP enabled, so I could not have changed anything in /System/Library, if that’s what you mean by system libraries

no

Let me know what other information I can give you. I’ve been looking forward to Version 12, and would love to get it up and running as soon as possible.

Additionally, I got Wolfram Desktop 12 to see if that could help diagnose my issues. Unfortunately, Wolfram Desktop has the same problem as Mathematica.

Thanks for all you’re doing,

Max

7.

My apologies. It affects all notebooks. The video was a side by side comparison of Mathematica 12 vs. 11 behavior (https://youtu.be/EJlPfXL-zKo). Mathematica is not in the list of accessibility enabled apps (https://youtu.be/94_JK4sVDEs).

I was hoping the video would illustrate what my issues were.

You mentioned that it could be due to some problems with system libraries. While I don’t recall ever messing with that stuff, how would I go about trying to fix it (hopefully without having to reinstall macOS)? Additionally, I got Wolfram Desktop to see if that would work, but unfortunately Desktop version 12 has the exact same problem as Mathematica.

Please let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to see me do. Whether in words or YouTube I’ll try to give you whatever help you need. It would be very problematic if I couldn’t get version 12 working by the time 10.15 rolls out. And I’ve been meaning for a while now to do a talk about Mathematica 12 at my school, but have had to delay until I can get this working.

Thanks for all your help,

Max

8.

Mr. Coplan,

Thank you for the additional information. I added it to the problem report.

At this point, I do not have any additional information that could help you further. We hope that this issue will be resolved in future versions of Mathematica (or MacOS).

We are always interested in improving Mathematica, and I want to thank you once again for taking the time to send us this report. If you run into any other behavior problems, or have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards,

Bruce Miller Wolfram Technical Support Wolfram Research, Inc. http://support.wolfram.com/

Again, THANK ALL OF YOU so much for reading through this and trying to help me.

Edit: @CarlLange recommended I look for any errors in Console.app. This is what I got. Apologies for the bad formatting. Is there a better way to attach these logs?

error   11:17:19.078120 -0400   Mathematica nw_path_close_fd Failed to close guarded necp fd 3 [9: Bad file descriptor] error   11:17:19.459129
-0400   Mathematica nw_path_close_fd Failed to close guarded necp fd 3 [9: Bad file descriptor] error   11:17:19.488852
-0400   Mathematica nw_path_close_fd Failed to close guarded necp fd 3 [9: Bad file descriptor] error   11:17:22.003149
-0400   WolframKernel   nw_path_close_fd Failed to close guarded necp fd 24 [9: Bad file descriptor] error  11:17:22.007884
-0400   taskgated   cannot open file at line 42270 of [95fbac39ba] error    11:17:22.007901 -0400   taskgated   os_unix.c:42270: (2) open(/var/db/DetachedSignatures) - No such file or directory default   11:17:22.008069 -0400   taskgated   MacOS error: -67062 error   11:17:22.016468 -0400   taskgated   cannot open file at line 42270 of [95fbac39ba] error    11:17:22.016483 -0400   taskgated   os_unix.c:42270: (2) open(/var/db/DetachedSignatures) - No such file or directory default   11:17:22.016543 -0400   taskgated   MacOS error: -67062 error   11:17:23.108475 -0400   WolframKernel   nw_path_close_fd Failed to close guarded necp fd 24 [9: Bad file descriptor] error  11:17:23.302284 -0400   WindowServer    SLXServer: Unexpected notification msg received: id is 65 default   11:17:23.681533
-0400   loginwindow -[PersistentAppsSupport saveLogoutPersistentState:finalSnapshot:] |      checkAgainstApp is : Mathematica default   11:17:23.681549
-0400   loginwindow -[PersistentAppsSupport appShouldBeRelaunched:] | entered. checking app: Mathematica default    11:17:23.681574
-0400   loginwindow -[PersistentAppsSupport saveLogoutPersistentState:finalSnapshot:] |           Adding to relaunchArray: Mathematica default  11:17:23.686914
-0400   loginwindow -[PersistentAppsSupport saveLogoutPersistentState:finalSnapshot:] |           Contents:(
        {
        BackgroundState = 2;
        BundleID = "com.wolfram.mathematica";
        Hide = 0;
        Path = "/Applications/Mathematica.app";
    },
        {
        BackgroundState = 2;
        BundleID = "com.apple.console";
        Hide = 0;
        Path = "/Applications/Utilities/Console.app";
    },
        {
        BackgroundState = 2;
        BundleID = "com.apple.finder";
        Hide = 0;
        Path = "/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app";
    } ) default 11:17:28.639517 -0400   Mathematica LSExceptions shared instance invalidated for timeout. error 11:21:15.039503
-0400   Mathematica CGContextGetCTM: invalid context 0x0. If you want to see the backtrace, please set CG_CONTEXT_SHOW_BACKTRACE environmental variable. error  11:21:15.039523
-0400   Mathematica CGContextGetDefaultUserSpaceToDeviceSpaceTransform: invalid context 0x0. If you want to see the backtrace, please set CG_CONTEXT_SHOW_BACKTRACE environmental variable. error   11:21:15.039539 -0400   Mathematica CGContextSaveGState: invalid context 0x0. If you want to see the backtrace, please set CG_CONTEXT_SHOW_BACKTRACE environmental variable. error  11:21:15.039553 -0400   Mathematica CGContextConcatCTM: invalid context 0x0. If you want to see the backtrace, please set CG_CONTEXT_SHOW_BACKTRACE environmental variable. error   11:21:15.039565 -0400   Mathematica CGContextSaveGState: invalid context 0x0. If you want to see the backtrace, please set CG_CONTEXT_SHOW_BACKTRACE environmental variable. error  11:21:15.039632
-0400   Mathematica CGContextSetCompositeOperation: invalid context 0x0. If you want to see the backtrace, please set CG_CONTEXT_SHOW_BACKTRACE environmental variable. error   11:21:15.039647
-0400   Mathematica CGContextDrawImages: invalid context 0x0. If you want to see the backtrace, please set CG_CONTEXT_SHOW_BACKTRACE environmental variable. error  11:21:15.039660
-0400   Mathematica CGContextRestoreGState: invalid context 0x0. If you want to see the backtrace, please set CG_CONTEXT_SHOW_BACKTRACE environmental variable. error   11:21:15.039671
-0400   Mathematica CGContextRestoreGState: invalid context 0x0. If you want to see the backtrace, please set CG_CONTEXT_SHOW_BACKTRACE environmental variable.

Again, thanks so much for any assistance. It really means a lot

Can you open Console.app and see if there are any logs that seem like they pertain to the issue? — Carl Lange, Jul 09 '19 at 23:46
Hm. Version 12 works fine for me under macos 10.14.5 What I do when it does not work (which happens very seldomly) is throwing the app into the trash bin and cleaning all directories (see here for a complete list of folders). You may want to keep backups of these directories though in order to restore your settings later. Afterwards, I freshly reinstalle Mathematica. Last time when I had problems (a few weeks ago), erasing ~/Library/Caches/Wolfram was key to the solution, IIRC. — Henrik Schumacher, Jul 10 '19 at 01:26
you may also try removing the files in ~/Library/Mathematica/ except for the Licensing folder; also, I noticed the title bar of your mathematica window is black in dark mode; but on my machine the title bar of mathematic notebooks is the same as the light mode. did you install other software that may change this? — egwene sedai, Jul 10 '19 at 21:13
@HenrikSchumacher, when it rarely doesn't work for you, is it the same problem I'm having, or something different? — Max Coplan, Jul 16 '19 at 15:27
@egwenesedai, you're right, the title bar is black in dark mode. I can change it from light to dark by toggling dark mode. I do not recall installing anything that would change the appearance of apps — Max Coplan, Jul 16 '19 at 15:28
@MaxCoplan I cannot tell if it was the same problem. I just tried to say that erasing these folders might help. — Henrik Schumacher, Jul 16 '19 at 15:32
@HenrikSchumacher were the videos helpful in showing what the problem was? — Max Coplan, Jul 16 '19 at 15:33
@MaxCoplan Ah the videos... Yeah, I got an idea. It is not exactly the same problem because your Mathematica kernel was able to start. Anyways, have you tried to wipe the directories? — Henrik Schumacher, Jul 16 '19 at 15:41
@MaxCoplan can you type anything in a notebook environment? It'd be very useful to be able to debug programatically. Alternately you can start a Terminal Mathematica session and launch a controllable FE from there that you can query. It might be the case that there is a system file that Mathematica is reading that sets up ignored listeners for all your FE input. — b3m2a1, Jul 22 '19 at 17:18
Watching one of those videos it seems that the FE notebook updating mechanism isn't getting called. I'd open a new ticket with that information. Like note that you can type and interact normally but the actual visual updates to the Qt widget layout or whatever aren't getting called. — b3m2a1, Jul 22 '19 at 17:23
@b3m2a1 thank you! Will do. If that works I'll try to get you that bounty (even though it's expired, so I'll have to figure out how to do that) — Max Coplan, Jul 24 '19 at 20:17

zkf · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-12T02:31:20.160

4

Type this into Terminal.app:

defaults write com.wolfram.Mathematica NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool YES

Here's how I figured it out: I created another user and opened Mathematica in that. It ran fine, but in light mode, whereas my main user had dark UI. I suspect at some point I was playing around with dark mode and changed the above setting for all apps on my user.

edited Sep 12 '19 at 02:31

answered Sep 11 '19 at 19:21

zkf

56
4

1

Oh my gosh, dude! You're a life safer! Literally saved my workflow at the last moment, given how close we are to Catalina's launch! You really deserve all the reputation you want, how can I give that to you? Thanks again! – Max Coplan Sep 12 '19 at 16:53
I have a question: Do you use VMWare on your computer? Because VMWare had a bug where it wouldn't work unless you changes the AquaSystemAppearance settings, and to fix that I did have to mess with some of those settings – Max Coplan Sep 12 '19 at 16:56
A more general solution that works for me is defaults delete -g NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance. This fixes it in Mathematica, Wolfram Desktop, etc. – Max Coplan Sep 12 '19 at 17:08
@MaxCoplan not a VMware user, but I have played around with this setting in the past. I don't recall using it on Mathematica but I guess I must have. I'm so glad it also worked for you! I was also in a similarly precarious position.... – zkf Sep 12 '19 at 17:43
Well check defaults find NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance and see if you've set it – Max Coplan Sep 12 '19 at 18:18
@MaxCoplan It's very strange, but that returns Found 1 keys in domain 'com.wolfram.Mathematica': { NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance = 1; } and that's all. So something weird is going on. – zkf Sep 12 '19 at 21:29
and Mathematica stops working when you do defaults delete com.wolfram.Mathematica NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance? – Max Coplan Sep 12 '19 at 21:50
Yup, and only works when I put it back. Isn't that mysterious? But I suppose it doesn't matter as long as a fix exists! – zkf Sep 13 '19 at 13:24
Let me ask you another question. If you enable dark mode, and try opening Mathematica without that setting, does Mathematica open with parts of the UI in dark mode (and obviously not working)? – Max Coplan Sep 13 '19 at 15:37
Yup, that's what happens. – zkf Sep 19 '19 at 15:39
That is so strange – Max Coplan Sep 19 '19 at 16:19
2

FWIW we believe we've found and fixed all the various issues behind this problem in the development version of Mathematica (i.e., fixes would be in the upcoming 12.1). Which is to say that we've both set the key directly on the app bundle, and also fixed a problem which can sometimes cause screen updates to be suspended on newer OSes under certain conditions. – John Fultz Oct 10 '19 at 20:18

Cannot install Mathematica 12 on macOS Mojave. Front-End completely unresponsive

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