Fix to frequent "Application not responding" for MATLAB on the Mac
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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?
6 Comments
Daniel Dolan
on 22 Jul 2024
@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
on 22 Aug 2024
I do not use Mac Silicon; I have not had these problems with Mac Intel.
Answers (2)
Animesh
on 3 May 2024
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:
2 Comments
Christian
on 6 Aug 2024
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!
Adam Danz
on 22 Aug 2024
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.
5 Comments
Duncan Carlsmith
on 30 Sep 2024 at 1:08
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
on 1 Oct 2024 at 3:01
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.
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