Sublime Forum

"subl" not working properly for macOS Catalina

#1

It’s been about a year since I last used Sublime Text 3. I recently upgraded my OS to Catalina and Sublime Text 3 to the latest (3.2.2 build 3211). After the upgrade, the command line “subl” doesn’t seem to work properly anymore.

Below outlines the sequence of events when I execute the “subl” command:

  1. The “subl” process opens up the Sublime Application whose window is behind the current window.
  2. The Sublime application window is blank. The file provided to the “subl” command does not get loaded.
  3. If I close the application window by clicking on the “x” on top-left hand corner, another Sublime window opens up immediately.
  4. In order to close the application, I have to close both the “subl” process and the Sublime application process via Activity Monitor.

Help is appreciated. Thanks.

0 Likes
#2

I can’t reproduce this on Catalina, though they did change a lot of permissions in that release. A reinstall may resolve your issues.

0 Likes
#3

My subl is also not working after a MacOS Catalina upgrade and Sublime seems to be indexing files and using 100% of my processor until either I force quit it or my laptop reboots, I did a full uninstall with CleanMyMac and reinstalled and it is still having both isssues. I turned off file_index in the settings, added node_modules to my exclude folder and tried *.js and *.php in excluded files setting. How can I get some verbose info when it crashes that would be useful?

0 Likes
#4

You can check the indexing status under Help>Indexing Status…. Which version of Sublime are you using? Which exact version of Catalina? Does it crash or just spin at 100% cpu usage? Is it locked while spinning?

0 Likes
#5

Sorry for the delayed response it’s been a hectic couple of weeks, I suspect the issue is with a plugin, So I disabled most of them and the issue only happens occasionally now, normally when editing large files, I found how to open the Console and have been watching that when it crashes.

I am using Sublime v3.2.2 build 3211 and Catalina 10.15.3, normally it just causes 100% CPU usage, sometimes I can force quit Sublime and the CPU usage goes back to normal, but most of the time I can’t force quit and either the OS reboots or I have to reboot the laptop and re-open everything.

Unfortunately one of the projects that I work on daily has a PHP file that’s 30,000 lines long and a JavaScript file that is 50,469 lines long and I have suggested we split these files but that is how the lead developer likes them and I make edits to these files daily so they are always open.

When I opened Sublime from the CLI using subl, it was crashing or causing a second sublime process to open with all the files in the original process open along with the file I opened using subl, but that behavior has apparently stopped happening so I’m not sure why it was happening or what I changed that fixed the issue but apparently it is no longer an issue.

0 Likes
#6

This is exactly the behavior I’ve noticed since installing 3211, and I’m not running Catalina-- I’m still on High Sierra (10.13).

A fresh, unmodified install of 3211 with an empty/missing settings folder (~/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 3) will exhibit the following behavior:

Launching from the command line via “subl” (with arguments, either the current folder (".") or “--project [projectName]”) will cause Sublime to launch itself repeatedly after quitting, and will also immediately steal focus back to itself when task-switching to another application running on another virtual desktop.

This often includes my fullscreened iTerm2 from which “subl” was launched, in which case I need to ssh in from another computer to kill the “subl” process.

After the “subl” process is dead, quitting Sublime Text works as expected.

Following this procedure, it is necessary to restart the Dock process, as Mission Control (virtual desktops) will no longer be functional.

Is the command-line launcher working well for other Mac users?

0 Likes