I normally keep the Messages app running but minimized unless I’m actively using it. In the last few days, it’s taken to silently quitting after some unpredictable amount of time while in the minimized state. I can find no Console logs indicating what happened, it’s just not running the next time I want to use it.
Apparently I’m not alone, but so far no permanent solutions. Any ideas here? I’m on a MBP M1 Pro, macOS 15.4.1.
No help here. While I normally do not keep Messages running, I’ve had Numbers and Pages silently quit while in the background. Maybe it’s an Apple app thing?
Numbers and Pages are different from Messages in that they open and close documents. (I don’t consider a thread in Messages to be a document, but I’m willing to be educated.) I believe that Numbers and Pages have quit silently only when three conditions are true: there are no open documents; I did not Hide the application; and I did switch to another application (either with command-tab or simply by clicking away from Numbers or Pages).
FWIW, I have two displays attached to my MBA M3 and do not use Stage Manager or Mission Control or anything else that would provide multiple spaces.
I do not minimize Messages, but recently it has been randomly quitting when not being used. I’m using Sequoia 15.4.1 on a Mac Mini with the M1 chip. It doesn’t generate a crash screen when it quits.
Could be Automatic Termination
The article goes into some detail about the conditions under which an application might be terminated, including having all of its windows minimized (and the OS deciding that it needs resources for something else.)
Messages does support this form of self-sacrifice:
(The MacOS implementation is far less exciting than that 80s movie about automatic termination.)
You can disable automatic termination with defaults write -g NSDisableAutomaticTermination -bool TRUE.
In TinkerTool it is Applications > Application control > Don’t allow macOS to automatically quit inactive applications.
Thanks, I’ll give it a shot and see if that fixes it.
Unfortunately, the behavior persists after issuing the NSDisableAutomaticTermination command.
