starting btt trigger a spinning wheel on firefox.

Bugs or Unexpected Behavior
1

Hi there,

long time user, this problem starting a few weeks ago.

each time btt start, firefox instantly get into spinning wheel (100% consistent).

It also happens even when btt is already started, at regular intervals ( a few times each hour).

Having btt stopped , the problem does not occurs for days.

I thought it was something on my Mac, but just got a brand new one, and it starting doing exactly the same as soon as btt was installed.

  • 5.695 (2025100706) alpha of btt installed
  • Mac OS tahoe 26.0.1 (25A362) (I guess it started after a Tahoe beta update)
  • Mac Pro M4 14"
  • latest firefox on the regular channel 143.0.4 (aarch64)
  • 5 trackpad shortcuts (previous, back, next tab / previous tab/ close). No other feature used (reset, removed those triggers, etc) nothing helped
  • priority helper installed (tried without)
  • can be reproduced 100% of the time

I’m a bit puzzled about where to start investigating (when It was on one Mac only, I though it could be something wrong on it, and was expecting to clean up preferences, etc).

but now on this brand new one, I guess there is some interaction between btt and firefox.

what could I do to investigate on this ?

what I tried → reset of all app settings → can still be reproduced 100% of the time.

deleting my triggers → still can be reproduced.

I hope this can be fixed and you could get some creative ideas on what to do next :slight_smile:

2

Have you checked the "Recently used" when this happens

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image1616×440 60 KB

3

Thanks for the suggestion.

I currently have no trigger defined at all, (it still crash), and indeed, no new entry shown here, but it was a good idea :slight_smile:

4

if Firefox is spinning, it means something inside of Firefox breaks. Do you maybe have some special extensions installed?

BTT might interact with apps using the system Accessibility API, usually that works well for Firefox but maybe something is interfering. You can disable BTT just for Firefox for now

5

thanks for the reply. Having firefox excluded does not change the thing, it still freeze instantly.

About extension, not that much (adblock and apple passwords), all deactivated , still no change.

checked into the “force close crash log” of Firefox, can’t find anything either which is weird on a machine with only a couple of software installed.

if anyone have an idea… you are welcome, I need btt mostly for firefox :slight_smile:

6

interestingly → deactivating btt for all app → start btt → no crash → activate btt for all app → still no crash, and btt is fully functionnal until I restart it.

at least, the consistant part of the crash can be avoided this way, is there anything different in btt when starting active for all apps , then when starting inactive/activating manually ?

could this be a timming problem at startup, or an init phase that is skipped when starting it manually ?

also interesting → starting btt deactivated for firefox → it still crash !

7

Ah wait, is the spinning whee for BTT or for Firefox? (Does activity monitor show "not responding") for BTT or for Firefox?

If it is for BTT, please take a process sample via this terminal command once this happens (it will be saved to your desktop)

sample BetterTouchTool > ~/Desktop/bettertouchtool-sample.txt
8

nono sorry I was unclear. the spinning is for Firefox.

9

note for others :

it’s not caused by firefox extension, but by the sync feature. As long as there is no sync’ed user, there is no crash. Adding a user instantly allow to reproduce the issue. Something loaded via sync seems to change firefox behavior when btt start.

if this give an idea to anyone, do not hesitate to !