Filed under: Terminal Tips
Terminal Tips: Disable annoying application crash dialogs

defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType noneThis will disable the "...unexpectedly quit" dialog that normally appears when an application crashes. If you ever want the dialogs to start appearing again, just replace "none" with "prompt".
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ken said 1:26PM on 8-28-2008
I actually like these dialog boxes, at least for Apple apps. It allows me to send them the crash report. For non-Apple apps, I don't need them. Too bad I can't differentiate them for enabling/disabling the boxes.
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wizardishungry said 1:30PM on 8-28-2008
defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType developer
^ sometimes useful for seeing if a particular plugin is causing a crash
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Fernando Lins said 1:35PM on 8-28-2008
Thank you so much I hate that damned dialog. Helpful maybe 2% of the times. Is there a trick to get rid of the one that pops up when you open a downloaded app/file ?
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delight1 said 1:57PM on 8-28-2008
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071029151619619
there isn't really a good way at this point.
i do remember another way, that involved making a .plist that you set up allowance's for certain data types though.
G said 1:48PM on 8-28-2008
I much prefer that dialog to the OS 9 days of apps suddenly not running anymore or freezing the entire machine (with the former leading to the latter if you didn't do a full reboot afterwards). Now at least I know what happened and I can make some snarky comments while I report it.
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Jonathan Wise said 1:51PM on 8-28-2008
I used to make snarky comments... but then I realised that there's probably no way on earth that anyone reads those things... unless you're like John Mayer or something...
Dan Sheerman said 5:58PM on 9-04-2008
Yup, resuming Parallels caused a Kernel Panic again... What was I doing at the time? You needed to ask? *points finger*
"Windows did it."
Karl said 1:51PM on 8-28-2008
If you have Xcode installed, you can use the CrashReporterPrefs applications to choose among the three options. It's in Developer/Applications/Utilities/.
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Jesse said 2:03PM on 8-28-2008
Those crash reports help fix bugs. Either send them or never whine/bitch/moan about bugs in your OS or Apps again. Asses.
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Shunnabunich said 9:51PM on 8-28-2008
It doesn't help a third-party dev fix bugs in their app when all their crash reports are just being fired off into a black hle anyway. I just wish I could selectively re-enable crash reporting for specific apps.
bigtex said 2:45PM on 8-28-2008
I want the crash reports for filing bugs, but I don't want to see the dialogs. There are three modes, basic, developer, and server. I always use server.
defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType
where represents one of the three operating modes: basic, developer, server
http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2004/tn2123.html
Basic — This is the default mode, described earlier.
Developer — This mode is designed for software developers. In this mode CrashReporter will display a more detailed crash report dialog in more cases. Figure 4 shows an example of the first CrashReporter dialog when running in Developer mode.
Server — This mode is designed for unattended servers. The CrashReporter user interface is never shown, although crash logs are still written to disk.
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bigtex said 2:47PM on 8-28-2008
Oh, whoops. Formatting rules messed up what I wrote.
defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType MODE
where MODE represents one of the three operating modes: basic, developer, server
Xiong Mao said 4:34PM on 8-28-2008
Is it possible to set the default to send the crash report?
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Jon H said 6:38PM on 8-28-2008
If you click the 'report' option, you can sometimes get a clue about why the app died by looking at the generated stack trace.
This applies whether the app if from Apple or not. You don't have to actually send the report.
And even if it's not an Apple program that crashed, it might be due to an Apple bug, so it might still be worth submitting.
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