obsproject / obsproject/obs-studio

[macOS] OBS crash on startup when system volume is running low on free space

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Description

Operating System Info

macOS 14

Other OS

No response

OBS Studio Version

30.1.2

OBS Studio Version (Other)

No response

OBS Studio Log URL

https://obsproject.com/logs/FKVlHTxYAoYb7GNW

OBS Studio Crash Log URL

No response

Expected Behavior

OBS Studio starts up correctly without the crash and pixels are visible on macOS Screen Capture source.

Current Behavior

OBS Studio app crashes on startup when disk is almost full.

Steps to Reproduce

Set up simple scene in OBS Studio.

  1. Open the OBS Studio app
  2. Add new Scene
  3. Add macOS Screen Capture source with default option to capture Built-In Retina Display
  4. On mac menu bar screen sharing picker is visible

Next part is to limit free disk space on macOS. Easiest approach is to create new volume.

  1. Open Disk Utility app
  2. Select System Volume
  3. Add an APFS volume to the selected container system container
  4. Select "Size Options..." and reserve ~ 95% of free space on system volume (leave ~ 1 GB free)
  5. Add new volume
  6. Restart OBS Studio

After creating new volume screen picker is gone and OBS Studio source preview is frozen with static frame and does not update. Restarting the OBS Studio app results in immediate crash on startup.

Anything else we should know?

This bug will trigger during normal use of mac and it does not require to have 5% of free space on machine. It may happen even when there is more than 15 GB free on system volume, but its occurrence is random.

After the crash, OBS Studio suggests to run in Safe Mode, but running in safe mode also results in crash of the app.

Screenshot 2024-04-22 at 12 58 15

Quick investigation showed that similar issue with disk space was mentioned on other project: sessionprojector.app crashes when disk running out of space. macOS Screen Capture Content source is relaying on new API for screen capturing content called ScreenCaptureKit. I believe it may be correlated and I was able to stop picker on apps like Zoom or DisplayLink Manager, which makes me think that they also use this new API.

I believe there are other open-source projects that uses that API and this issue may be reproducible e.q. WebKit link

Issue is reproducible on latest macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 and macOS Sonoma 14.5 beta 3 with OBS Studio 30.1.2 on M2 Pro.

Attaching ips crashes and system profile.
MacBook Pro.spx.zip
OBS crashes.zip

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the attached OBS crash archives and system profile, then inspect the macOS Screen Capture source and its ScreenCaptureKit-related startup path. Reproduce the issue with approximately 1 GB of free system-volume space and verify that OBS starts normally and the macOS Screen Capture preview continues updating.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
macos
Domain
desktop, operating-systems
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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