How do I diagnose startup problems for MATLAB on Mac OS X?

I installed MATLAB Student Version on my new MacBook. When I try to launch MATLAB, the icon sort of bounces in the dock for a moment, then disappears. There isn't even an error message! What can I do to fix this?

Answer 1

[John]

If MATLAB does not start properly on Mac, there are many times where there is no error message displayed. To obtain debugging information for Mac, there are two methods you can try:

1) Check the system Console log:

1. Launch the Console located in Applications/Utilities.

2. Click the broom icon labeled "Clear Display" to clear the log file.

3. Launch MATLAB again. Any crash messages should be recorded into Console.

There may be a lot of information, but usually there should be an error message that is MATLAB specific. For example:

Dyld Error Message: 
Library not loaded: libtbb.dylib 
Referenced from: /Applications/MATLAB_R2009b.app/bin/maci/MATLAB.app/Contents/MacOS/libmwservices.dylib 
Reason: image not found

2) Run MATLAB from Terminal

To see just the error message for MATLAB, you can run MATLAB from the Terminal application. To do so:

1. Open Finder and locate the MATLAB application.

2. CTRL+click or right click on the MATLAB application and chose "Show Package Contents. (For MATLAB R2008b and below, just open the MATLAB folder that appears in Applications.

3. From the MATLAB contents, navigate to the bin folder

4. Locate the "matlab" script in this directory. We will need this later

5. Open another Finder window and run the Terminal Application in Applications/Utilities.

6. Drag the "matlab" script from the MATLAB Finder window into the Terminal application. If you did this correctly, Terminal will show you the full path to the script. Ex:

/Applications/MATLAB_R2010b.app/bin/matlab

7. Hit the return key in Terminal to launch the MATLAB script.

If there are any errors with MATLAB, they will be recorded in Terminal.

Once you have the error message, you can search the support site or create a service request for help here:

http://www.mathworks.com/support/

[Daniel Shub]

Accepted by DES

[Francesco Pausata]

I can open matlab via terminal but can't via the icon. It happened after it crashed and then when I tried to reopen it, it asked me to access my documents folders and I said no. After that I can't open it via the icon any longer.

I tried with the terminal and I can open it but I was again asked if it could access my documents folder and I said yes, then it opened.

[Juan Cordova]

It happened to me after upgrade 5 to R2019b.

What I did was to go to finder, then to Applications, then right-click on MATLAB and select GetInfo from the popup menu.

Then go to permissions and make sure admin has read and write permissions.

Click on the Icon as you would normally do (launchpad or from Applications).

It will ask you again for permission to access you Doucments folder (and others), say yes.

[andrea silvestro]

Thanks Juan Cordova! That worked for me!

[Preben Bruun-Nyzell]

Thanks Juan! I had the same problem with R2020b on macOS Big Sur and setting the permission for admin fixed the problem.

[Ayodeji Emmanuel]

This is the error I get

Cannot locate or initialize class com/mathworks/jmi/OpaqueJavaInterface.

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/mathworks/jmi/OpaqueJavaInterface

Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.mathworks.jmi.OpaqueJavaInterface

at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:382)

at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:424)

at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:349)

at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:357)

Answer 2

[zach]

this still doesn't help me...I tried loading via terminal and the program just hangs for an hour without ever loading. I'm going crazy trying to solve this situation. 2014a and os 10.8.5