Fix to frequent "Application not responding" for MATLAB on the Mac

I am frequently having the Mac version of MATLAB lock up in "Application not responding", leading to "Force quit" in the Finder or Terminal. I have found no specific way to reproducibly make this happen, but it tends to occur after a number of traditional (Java based) figures are opened and closed. The problem occurs in several hand-coded graphical interfaces (not GUIDE, pre-App Designer) that have worked for years, and it seems to be getting worse.

As far as I can tell, this is a Mac-specific problem. I thought it was confined to Silicon machines, but the same behavior occurs for Silicon machines running the Intel version of MATLAB as well as Intel machines. I see it a lot in releases 2023b and 2024a, even after updates, but one of my users reports problems as far back as 2021a. I know that I see more and more frequency Java errors in the command window in recent years, and these often preceed MATLAB freezing altogether. Just today, I've observed the problem when using Corretto 11 and 17 (only 2024a supports this), and I'm pretty sure it happens with Corretto 8.

A Javascript version (uifigure) of the same graphical interfaces presumably would not experience this problem, but it would take an enormous amount of work to transition these program over from legacy code. Despite what the Bug Fixes say in updates and new releases, the problem has not been fixed. Any ideas?

[zixing wang]

Strongly agree! Please fix this! It is so annoying! I get so frustrated and I simply do not understand why Matlab engineers have ignored this problem for years... I am a huge fan of matlab but ignoring this serious and obvious bug for years breaks my heart.

[Walter Roberson]

Datapoint:

I have never had this happen on my Intel based iMac or MacBook Pro before them.

[Voss]

@zixing wang: Maybe they're not ignoring it; maybe it's just a difficult problem to solve.

[Voss]

@Daniel Dolan: Transitioning programmatic GUI code from figures to uifigures might be easier than you think (e.g., in my experience, uifigures appear to support uicontrols, in spite of what the uicontrol documentation claims).

[Daniel Dolan]

@Walter Roberson: if I understand you correctly, there were no problems on your Intel Macs until recently. That would be consistent with my experience, though hard to test because most of my users have moved over to Silicon machines. Troubleshooting the interaction between MATLAB, Apple, and the Java library (e.g., Amazon) is fiendishly difficult.

@Voss I started down the transition from figures to uifigures and independently discovered lots of undocumented stuff, such as uicontrols working in uifigures. I am not sure what to make to of that. I don't want to invest lots of time into something that might change or be completely redone in the next version. Mathworks should be more open about this Java to Javascript transition, which has been going on for nearly a decade. Apart from some conceptual changes, I can see almost everything is in place for a full transition to Javascript graphics. Two missing features for me are the Extent property (sizing items based on their content) and better print/export support. I wish this details would get more attention--I really don't care about Live Editor updates or new AppDesigner widgets that keep getting released.

[Walter Roberson]

@Daniel Dolan

I do not use Mac Silicon; I have not had these problems with Mac Intel.

Answer 1

[Animesh]

Hey @Daniel Dolan

I have encountered a similar issue before. It seems to be related to the version of Java that comes with MATLAB, which has not been updated for some time.

A workaround that helped me was to update to the recommended version of Java.

You can refer to the following MathWorks article on how to configure your system to use Java:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/configure-your-system-to-use-java.html

[Daniel Dolan]

I've observed the problems with three versions (8, 11, and 17) of Amazon Coretto in MATLAB 2024a. Version 8 seems to be a little more stable, but freezes still happen. It's hard to track because no specific sequence reproducibly causes MATLAB to freeze.

I have not tried Adoptium OpenJDK yet--is that what you are using? I wonder why Mathworks lists it on that page, but the installation instructions suggests Coretto.

[Christian]

Hi, I am using a Mid 2018 MacBook Pro with Intel architecture and Sonoma 14.5. I had the same issue, but switching from Amazon Coretto to Adoptium OpenJDK ( ver 21 LTS ) did the trick for me!

Answer 2

[Adam Danz]

Thank you for sharing your experience, @Daniel Dolan and others.

I've consulted with MathWorks developers who work on this infrastructure to gain a better understanding of the problem. The occasional unresponsiveness you're experiencing is likely due to long-standing Java-related issues on macOS. While some customers have found solutions by upgrading their version of Java, this has not proven to be a consistently reliable solution. Instead, we recommend trying the New Desktop for MATLAB, available as a beta release starting from R2023a, which effectively addresses this issue (instructions).

In addition to contacting Technical Support, bugs and performance issues can be reported directly from the beta desktop. See this answer for more information.

[Dan]

Sorry for the long silence. New job, new email, new MATLAB license...

I have not been able to extensively test the new desktop in ways that lead to crashing. So far my "breakMATLAB" routine, where a new figure is created and destroyed every few seconds, has not led to a crash. These intermittent problems are so hard to track down. Sometimes the issue shows up immediately, within seconds of starting a MATLAB session, but then it might not happen for 15-30 minutes of solid use. So I'm still searching for a consistent way to break the old desktop to see if the new desktop is immune.

The new desktop is obviously different and breaks some habits learned over many years. For example, the hot keys for opening files in the editor and switching between the editor/command window are missing on the Mac. Overall this look suspiciously like a Javascript front end, even though it's not explicitly stated. One tell is the extra MATLAB process that appers on the Mac toolbar, which for the last ten years only happens when uifigures are created. Any comments, @Adam Danz?

The big question now is whether to switch UI to the explicit Javascript version (uifigure) or stick with traditional syntax, hoping that the latter migrates so gracely to Javascript that nothing breaks. What approach should new projects use?

[Duncan Carlsmith]

I am running 2024b on a MacBook Pro M1 chip. I work mostly with Live Scripts. I get graphics unreponsive errors that very rarely resolve, and sometimes total freezes with or without the entire IDE becoming a jumble of detached unreponsive windows, and I have to force quit MATLAB and restart every 2-3 hours as I have for four years now. I've tried all of the community "fixes" to no avail. I love MATLAB but cannot recommend it to and use it with my students and others given this state of affairs. I'm sure half the market is Mac users, more in the education sector, and I'm very disappointed this issue has not been aggressively studied and fixed.

[Walter Roberson]

@Duncan Carlsmith :

If I recall correctly, Mac user is less than 20% of the market.

[Duncan Carlsmith]

I can't speak for the verasity of this article I just found but https://www.jamf.com/resources/press-releases/new-research-finds-71-of-students-in-higher-education-today-use-or-would-prefer-to-use-mac/ suggests 40% of university students are Mac users as of 2019. Cost is the principle driver for PC users, of order half the the PC users preferring Mac except for cost. I recall at my institution at that time there was a fairly even split between iPhone and Android, Mac and PC. Rather gone are the days of "computer labs" at universities - it's all BYOD and given the LMS use hockey stick (mostly CANVAS, 60% I think it is now), a student must have a laptop to take any class, and buy it themselves. I can't dive into/require MATLAB in a class and exclude students with APPLE products in such an environment. Interesting the article suggests students today would prefer employers who would give them options. If only 20% of MATLAB users are Mac users, well, that's interesting. Could that represent an opportunity? And APPLE's all M1 now so...

[Dan]

My experience at scientific conferences/workshops is that Apple makes up 30-50% of the laptop market. Desktop use is much lower than that, but we there is also a strong drift towards purely mobile computer (no more laptop + desktop for everyone). Mathworks abandoned Apple before, back in the late 90s, but that does not seem to be the intention now and makes much less sense that it did then. Ironically, the frozen pre-OSX release of MATLAB was very stable, even though it lagged behind a few versions. What we have now is something that is at times barely useable.

@Duncan Carlsmith makes an excellent point: how do we convince our students to invest in a language that routinely crashes on a fair number of machines, possibly even their own? It's already an uphill battle convincing universities to maintain site licenses when other faculty chant "Python is free". Many of the proposed fixes do not seem to help, though I have not fully test non-Amazon Java or the new (seemingly Javascript based) MATLAB desktop yet.