MultiMarkdown-->Web Page (.html) Compile Crashes, MacOS 15.5 + Scrivener 3.4 (16639)

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
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Background: I recently got an M1 MacBookAir running MacOS Sequoia 15.5 and installed Scrivener 3.4 (16639). Both MacOS and Scrivener show that they are fully up to date. I imported my Preferences from my previous (x86) MacBook Air.

The problem: When I attempt to run the compile I need (MultiMarkdown—>Web Page (.html), with “Convert rich text to MultiMarkdown” selected) Scrivener crashes and does not compile.

I tested multiple types of compile and found the following:

  • MultiMarkdown—>Web Page (.html) compile crashes both when “Convert rich text to MultiMarkdown” is selected and when it isn’t.
  • Web Page (.html) compile works, but crashes if “Convert MultiMarkdown to rich text in notes and text” is selected.
  • MultiMarkdown compile works, including if “Convert rich text to MultiMarkdown” is selected.
  • All other forms of compile work normally.

I have tried compiling both the files I am actually working on and the Tutorial, with the same results.

Can anyone help with this? I couldn’t find any threads on this topic by Googling, and this is one of the main functions I need from Scrivener, so if it’s not going to work on this computer then this computer isn’t going to work for me…

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Here are a few troubleshooting steps, to try and isolate the problem:

  • Open Terminal and execute the following:

    which multimarkdown

  • If that returns a path, you could try temporarily renaming it or uninstalling it if you use a package manager, and restarting Scrivener to force it to use its internal version of the MMD executable.

    • If that works better, you’re probably fine leaving it that way as Scrivener has the latest version. Maybe for example if you did a full system migrate from a TimeMachine image you have a really old Intel-only build that came along for the ride.
    • But feel free to brew install multimarkdown if you want to have a separate copy for other purposes. The latest version definitely does work in general on an M2 with 15.5 at least, so it should work fine on M1.

  • If you get “multimarkdown not found” in response, then you’re already using Scrivener’s version, and we should see if something is messing with its ability to work normally:

    Back in Terminal, execute the following command (which assumes a default install location), and after pressing Return, type in a little sample MMD like I demonstrate, followed by hitting Ctrl-D twice to terminate input:

    /Applications/Scrivener.app/Contents/Resources/MultiMarkdown/bin/multimarkdown
# This is a test
This should output HTML once we terminate input.

    If that crashes, hangs, or throws an error, then that would explain why Scrivener is struggling, because that will use its built-in copy to run the conversion.

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I do get “multimarkdown not found” and then the following error when entering “/Applications/Scrivener.app/Contents/Resources/MultiMarkdown/bin/multimarkdown” (I can see in Finder that this is the correct filepath for Scrivener’s multimarkdown file, so I’m assuming that’s not the problem?):

zsh: bad CPU type in executable: /Applications/Scrivener.app/Contents/Resources/MultiMarkdown/bin/multimarkdown

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Okay, that’s interesting as we’re both using the same version to test with. Maybe it doesn’t work well with the M1 chip? That’s first I’ve heard of it if so, which would be odd.

What happens if you install your own copy, and try running it from Terminal first, to make sure you don’t get the same error?

Incidentally, if for some reason we can’t get MMD working, Scrivener does also support Pandoc integration, which in some cases is going to be better anyway (MMD isn’t often updated these days, but it’s tiny and fast so it’s nice as an embedded option).

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Installing it directly fixes the Scrivener compile crash error, thank you so much! I note that when installing the MMD .pkg it gives a popup that says you need to install Rosetta to enable Intel-based features to run on an m1 Mac (which I had it do before proceeding) which seems like it might be relevant to the issue here…

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Okay! I guess when you execute a command line (even through GUI software like Scrivener does it) it doesn’t route through the whole system that would alert you to needing to install Rosetta (forgot I installed that I’m sure), while the PKG would, that makes sense. Glad to hear it’s running smoothly on the new system now.

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