While the Boss goes on (deserved) holiday 
Unfortunately neither of those ideas work out. Every setting (OS) I compared between iMac and Macbook looked to be the same. Let me know if I can check anything else for you.
@ECJ
Consider resetting your home folder permissions per this Apple article (read entirely): support.apple.com/en-us/HT203538
The downside––if you’ve changed certain read or write permissions for a specific purpose, after the reset (which will set them to system default) you’ll need to change them back to what you wish.
First thing I’ll try tomorrow morning, thanks!
Didn’t change anything. Unfortunately.
Thanks to all for the ideas, support, and forum tweaks. Indisposed yesterday, so I couldn’t test or reply, and I have commitments today.
From the time I had available this morning:
User and system language are set to English.
Direct download, not MAS.
Scrivener is not set to reopen projects.
Yesterday, I tried to run 3.1 from the desktop. I also deleted 3.0.3 from Applications (dragged to trash and trash emptied) and moved 3.1 to Applications. 3.1 wouldn’t run.
I deleted 3.1 and reinstalled 3.0.3. All was well.
Today, I downloaded 3.1 again and tried to run it from the desktop, without success.
I then launched 3.0.3 and it acknowledged that the previous attempt to launch Scrivener had failed. It highlighted a preference error.
I downloaded AppCleaner (freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/) and got it to remove every trace of Scivener that it could find, both 3.0.3 and 3.1.
I rebooted the Mac and downloaded a fresh copy of 3.1. It launched without error from the desktop. I then closed Scrivener, moved it to Applications, and launched it again. All is well, it seems.
One thing that might be different in my preferences is that I save my scratchpad and zipped backups to designated folders stored in iCloud. Could it have been a conflict between 3.1 and iCloud (though I can now set 3.1 to store backups and my scratchpad in iCloud)?
Slàinte mhòr.
Thanks JoRo!
So this could still be any preference from within Scrivener, right? Any way to compare preferences of different installations? like any text files where all or a bunch of preference are stored readable so I could open those from my different installations next to each other and compare line per line?
You can save preferences to a file and load them later (in General Preferences, click on the Manage button at the bottom left).
I save mine to a folder in Dropbox so I can get at them from any computer. The files have a .plist extension and can be opened in Text Edit (or QuickView) so they can be compared. Or you could use the command line and diff them if you’ve comfortable with that.
HTH.
Solved it. Stupid Me. Didn’t follow your above instructions any further, as the first step already wasn’t working. Couldn’t even open Scrivener with Shift key, so my brain stopped any following action after that: If 1 isn’t working, don’t even try 2, it can’t. - Wrong.
However, put the “com.literatureandlatte.scrivener3.plist” away and 3.1 loaded just fine. One thing I noticed though is that there was still the old “com.literatureandlatte.scrivener2.plist” sitting in that folder. This definitely wasn’t available on the macbook, as I set that up from scratch way after 3.0 was released. On the other user on iMac the “com.literatureandlatte.scrivener2.plist” wasn’t available too, as I only set up those second user a few weeks ago, so also way after 3.0. May that be causing any issues? Have to admit though, putting “com.literatureandlatte.scrivener2.plist” solely didn’t work, but who knows.
However, many apologies that I stopped on that one route too early, yesterday. Owe you something I hope the above may help you getting 3.1 ready for other users that may experience the same issue.
Read that too late unfortunately. Replaced the now new “com.literatureandlatte.scrivener3.plist” with the old one, with which 3.1 wouldn’t load and everything still worked fine, so that wouldn’t help finding the cause I’m afraid. But I will keep an Eye to that for any further case, so thanks for that.
From Scrivener’s perspective these locations are like any other folder you have permission to read and write from. The only thing that makes them special is how iCloud monitors and manages the files Scrivener creates within them—which is also something it is unaware of.
As noted you can save preferences to a file, but my guess will be that any settings saved using the Manage button won’t directly cause a crash. That is possible (consider for example if you selected a corrupted JPG as a corkboard background texture), but unlikely if things work fine in 3.0.3. More likely the problem is in the original .plist, some of which is maintained by macOS and not Scrivener.
That can be loaded in TextWrangler and read line by line, but I wouldn’t encourage it. If we are provided with a copy of a plist that crashes Scrivener on load over here, then we can simply track that down with debugging in a few minutes.
It is unlikely that is a problem—Scrivener 3 has nothing to do with the old preference file—that’s why when you upgrade you have to manually move your preferences over with a saved pref file, or rebuild them yourself from scratch. We did come across a rather peculiar macOS bug a while back where the System Preferences: Keyboard: Shortcuts tool was writing custom shortcuts into the old scrivener2.plist file. Turns out it was confused over which version of Scrivener was installed.
If trashing that file didn’t do anything, and it didn’t reappear without running Scrivener 2.x, then it’s surely just a “junk file” at this point that nothing references.
Again if anyone has a copy of the scrivener3.plist file that crashes Scrivener on load, I’d love to try reproducing that on my system. It sounds like at this point all copies have been thoroughly trashed, but maybe a copy can be pulled out of Time Machine or something. I’d rather not have as part of our 3.1 upgrade release notes: if it crashes, thoroughly delete everything related to Scrivener. 
I still have that old plist. Though as I said, replacing the new one with those “old” one for testing, didn’t hold 3.1 back from running as fine as it can. Not sure if the “error” wasn’t overwritten, though I changed them back after 3.1 loaded to definitely have a fresh start.
If that’s still useful for you, I can hand it over. Would it be safe to upload here or does it contain any personal stuff?
Ah okay I missed where you tried that. Well if it doesn’t crash for you after replacing it then I doubt the problem can be communicated with a file. It was probably a jam in the preference infrastruction of the Mac.
If you do want to send it, I’d use PM or email (both as icons below my avatar on the left). There may be personal information in it, in the form of any information you’ve added to the General: Author Information panel, as well as the paths and filenames of the projects you use (some window state info is stored there, like split view and window shape).
Well… There is no E-Mail under your Avatar. Only PM and Website if I’m not overseeing something. PM doesn’t work though. Invalid file extension.
Just downloaded the Beta noir on three different machines all running Mojave latest betas and they all work flawlessly (and beautifully dark 
)
Sad you missed all the fun getting it running
Glad to hear the update went smoothly in your case, marcoiac. I’m liking the dark look a lot as well, it’s a preference I have in general, always choosing dark themes in programs that have offered it. Nice to have the whole system like a lump of charcoal instead of a flashlight. 
On the crashing bug a few had, I got lucky and ran into the same exact crash pattern, while testing something else. I’ve got a settings file that will trigger the bug 100% of the time, on this Mac anyway. So hopefully Keith can use that to track down the problem setting.
Great news. Hope that won’t push the official update back for too long!
I’ve also had zero issues with the beta. Figures it always helps to know when someone DOESN’T have any problems!
I made the mistake of installing the beta before reading this thread. I’m one of the poor unfortunate souls who’s crashing on launch every time. This is a new computer and all apps were freshly installed, so there shouldn’t be a whole lot of extraneous “stuff” on it. Ioa, if you need crash logs or anything, give a shout.
Yeah, so easy on the eyes, the noir look! We should have the option of having this forum in dark mode too 