electron: Crash in GetLoginItemSettings on macOS 10.13

If anyone’s looking for a workaround, apparently Slack has an alpha where it is no longer crashing: http://slack-ssb-updates.s3.amazonaws.com/support-test/Slack-3.0.0-alpha1709277b512d6-macOS.zip

can confirm that with this update Slack is working again for me

TL;DR for people who don’t want to read whole bunch of stuff, what helped:

rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.backgroundtaskmanagementagent/backgrounditems.btm

It looks like the path of the backgrounditems.btm file is here:

/Users/$your_user/Library/Application Support/com.apple.backgroundtaskmanagementagent/backgrounditems.btm

found via

sudo find / -name backgrounditems.btm -not -path '*TimeMachine*'

@vanshg thanks for looking. Dont know how to adjust the visibility of the bug. Perhaps open your own?

here’s what the report says:

Login Item corrupted and can not be deleted from Users & Groups after updating to macOS High Sierra

Summary:
My Login Items have been corrupted; they show up as `Unknown` with a yellow explanation / warning symbol.  I am unable to delete Login Items from the System Preferences UI.  Editing `plist` files that have been previously associated with the Login Items preference pane has no effect.

Various OSX API's that attempt to read the users Login items are also failing.
A limited list of apps that are currently crashing because the API to fetch the user's login items is broken:

- Google Chrome
- Most apps based on google chrome / Github's eletron framework
- Viscosity vpn


Steps to Reproduce:

0) Be running macOS Sierra.
1) Upgrade to High Sierra


Expected Results:
I expect that my login items are not corrupted / lost / damaged.
I expect that the APIs built into OSX do not result in a crash.  Here is a truncated stack trace.  The same one (and similar ones) is available in the github issues link below.

OS Version: Mac OS X 10.13 (17A405)

Time Awake Since Boot: 450 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread: 0 CrBrowserMain Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL) Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000000 Exception Note: EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal: Illegal instruction: 4 Termination Reason: Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0x4 Terminating Process: exc handler [0]

Application Specific Information: *** CFEqual() called with NULL first argument ***

Thread 0 Crashed:: CrBrowserMain Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread 0 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff4edbc73c CFEqual + 620

Actual Results:
When I click the `-` button on the system UI, i expect the `Unknown` entry to be removed.  It is not.  When i click the `Hide` check box, i get *another* `Unknown` entry in the list.

When I click the `-` Button in the UI, i see multiple lines in the `Console.app`.  They look like this:

Error:18446744073709551581 File:/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/AccountsPref/AccountsPref-285/LoginItem.m Line:68

and come from the `com.apple.preferences.users.remoteservice` process.




Version/Build:
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.13 (17A405)


Configuration:
Here's some additional information documenting this problem:

https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/10561#issuecomment-334634029

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8096021
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8086931
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8089760

Sorry for my bad english!

I hope I was helpful

@flindeberg, yes that’s the case.

however there is somebody that claims to have a solution. I have not yet tested this…

Okay, they found the problem a couple of days ago. They know how to fix it, but as far as I know, they're not sure what caused it to happen in the first place (migration assistant is my guess).
 
Anyway, search out and destroy a file called backgrounditems.btm then reboot. The login panel should be cleared out. The senior advisor and I rebooted three times with a test app inserted through the normal login panel procedures and all was well. I added back my normal items and they'e still working just fine.
 
I'm on a new/used iMac late 2015 2.8ghz, I-5, running 10.13
 
Good luck.

from: https://discussions.apple.com/message/32423169?ac_cid=tw123456#32423169

Regarding Slack crashes, reply from their support team:

As it turns out, we've identified a bug in this version of Slack, and the good news is that we've found a solution!

Currently, the fix is available in version 3.0.0 of Slack which is presently still in beta. The regular release will be coming soon, but if you'd like to get the fix right away, you can download the beta here: https://slack.com/beta/osx.

This issue is back for me on 10.13.1 (17B48).

The error from console.app is:

### Error:18446744073709551581 File:/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/AccountsPref/AccountsPref-285/LoginItem.m Line:68

It is preventing Slack from starting…

Here’s the stack trace:

Process:               Slack [31246]
Path:                  /Applications/Slack.app/Contents/MacOS/Slack
Identifier:            com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap
Version:               2.8.2 (4331)
App Item ID:           803453959
App External ID:       824071960
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           Slack [31246]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2017-11-05 12:24:27.271 -0800
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.13.1 (17B48)
Report Version:        12
Bridge OS Version:     3.0 (14Y661)
Anonymous UUID:        63597570-A405-33E8-EEA0-EE3FDB7D5E10

Sleep/Wake UUID:       B0EA3282-6FDC-4116-84EC-40124798980E

Time Awake Since Boot: 400000 seconds
Time Since Wake:       350000 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread:        0  CrBrowserMain  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal:    Illegal instruction: 4
Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0x4
Terminating Process:   exc handler [0]

Application Specific Information:
*** CFEqual() called with NULL first argument ***

Thread 0 Crashed:: CrBrowserMain  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   com.apple.CoreFoundation      	0x00007fff4415a89c CFEqual + 620
1   com.github.electron.framework 	0x00000001062ca976 0x1060b3000 + 2193782
2   com.github.electron.framework 	0x00000001062ca812 0x1060b3000 + 2193426
3   com.github.electron.framework 	0x000000010614eb18 atom::Browser::GetLoginItemSettings(atom::Browser::LoginItemSettings const&) + 24
4   com.github.electron.framework 	0x00000001060bfa0d atom::api::App::GetLoginItemSettings(mate::Arguments*) + 61
5   com.github.electron.framework 	0x00000001060ca429 0x1060b3000 + 95273
6   com.github.electron.framework 	0x00000001060ca3ee 0x1060b3000 + 95214
7   com.github.electron.framework 	0x00000001060ca3c4 0x1060b3000 + 95172
8   com.github.electron.framework 	0x00000001060ca38f base::internal::Invoker<base::internal::BindState<atom::Browser::LoginItemSettings (atom::api::App::*)(mate::Arguments*)>, atom::Browser::LoginItemSettings (atom::api::App*, mate::Arguments*)>::Run(base::internal::BindStateBase*, atom::api::App*&&, mate::Arguments*&&) + 31
9   com.github.electron.framework 	0x00000001060ca10f 0x1060b3000 + 94479
10  com.github.electron.framework 	0x00000001060c9e19 0x1060b3000 + 93721
11  com.github.electron.framework 	0x00000001060c9ccc mate::internal::Dispatcher<atom::Browser::LoginItemSettings (atom::api::App*, mate::Arguments*)>::DispatchToCallback(v8::FunctionCallbackInfo<v8::Value> const&) + 124
12  libnode.dylib                 	0x000000010a560d85 0x10a365000 + 2080133
13  libnode.dylib                 	0x000000010a611d48 0x10a365000 + 2805064

<snip>

Unfortunately, the backgrounditems.btm file is no longer present in the path it was prior.

For transparency:

https://openradar.appspot.com/radar?id=4972010287398912 https://openradar.appspot.com/radar?id=5052010898391040

Alright. I’ve finally discovered what’s been causing these “unknown” login items to appear, at least in my case. I am a Multiplatform mobile developer so I work with both iOS and Android devices, as such I use the Android File Transfer app to copy data to/from my Nexus 6p. However AFT has an annoying habit of always adding itself to the Startup Items. So I used this hack to prevent it from doing so. My guess is that whenever I run Android File Transfer, it tries to re-add its (nonexistent, since I renamed it) startup item, which causes the Unknown items to appear. So for now I’ve switched to using the command-line adb tool to copy files to/from my device, which is a bit clunky but it works. I suspect that other apps that manipulate their login items but somehow screw up in doing so is causing this for other people.

Can also confirm that the solution @kquinsland posted above worked perfectly!! Note that removing that file will remove all items that are currently in the Login Items list in System Preferences so be sure and make a note of the apps/other things that you have in there right now so that you can re-set them up, BUT it DOES get rid of all the “Unknown” items! Now all of the apps that were crashing on me (Chrome, Viscosity, Slack, etc.) are working once again.

@vanshg The same thing just happened to me. The worst day of my life. At least I know what’s wrong.