Scriv crash

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
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1

I think this is only the second crash in my many, many years of using the usually rock solid Scrivener.

It happened twice this morning. On both occasions, I clicked to apply a saved Layout, made a couple of keystrokes, and bang! Scriv was gone. The file I was working on was sizeable—about 40,000 words—but I had worked a lot on it over many months in the usual Layout with no problems.

My Mac mini’s crash log offered this near its head…

System Integrity Protection: enabled
Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
Exception Type: EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000000
Termination Reason: Namespace SIGNAL, Code 4 Illegal instruction: 4
Terminating Process: exc handler [32425]

… followed by lots more that (also) means nothing to me.

Any clues here as to why?

Scrivener 3.4, MacOS 15.3.1

2

Hi django. Assuming this crash is only affecting this one project, you could reset the project display settings for that project.

Since you’d just adjusted the layout, that’s my first thought.

This Knowledge Base article explains how to reset the project display settings.

If you see the crashing with multiple projects, I recommend that you reset Scrivener’s global preferences.

This Knowledge Base article explains resetting Scrivener’s preferences.

Hopefully, one or the other will correct this.

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3

Thanks RuthS. I’ve fiddled with it some more to try to figure out what causes the crash, and it is the length of the file, which is 19 files as one long Scrivening. Changing the Layout sends it into a tailspin, and it crashes. Anyway, will try the two display settings you suggest, but my sense is that it may not be the one project.

4

Just before I try your suggestions, RuthS, I wondered… You talk about first resetting the project display settings. But aren’t the custom Layouts I’ve set up available (in other words the same) across all projects? That’s what I’m seeing.

5

Layouts are indeed something outside of projects, however if the project you are attempting to adjust with it has a “jammed” UI file, then it might crash when using it on that project.

If the layout works fine in another project, say the interactive tutorial project as a test, then it’s worth trying the reset.

6

Amber, thanks for reminding me about the Interactive Tutorial.

I tested with that, and the same crash happened: made a long-ish scrivenings from multiple files, went in and deleted a few words and so on, and bang, within a few seconds it crashed (specifically: window disappeared, Scrivener closed itself).

So, I did RuthS’s suggested reset of the global prefs (saving my prefs as a preset first, as recommended in the instructions linked to).

That seems to have done the trick (crossing all available fingers; I left two to type with). I went back to the offending project, made the v-e-r-y long scrivening, made some changes and so on, and all solid. So I then restored my settings.

Thanks for the help with this. Much appreciated. But, you know, fingers still crossed…

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