Unable find Teensy Loader. Is the Teensy Loader application running? error on OS X

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ahochan

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I just installed Arduino 1.6.3 with Teensyduino on OS X Yosemite. The same computer has been running Teensyduino with 1.X without problems.

I am trying to program a Teensy 3.1 (OSH Park Edition), but when I press upload, I always get this error:

Unable find Teensy Loader. Is the Teensy Loader application running?

I see the dock bouncing slightly when this happens, so it appears that the application is being launched, but immediately crashes.

How do I troubleshoot this?
 
Try to start the loader app manually.

Open Programs in a finder windown, right click Program Icon in the dock, select "Open Programs"

Right click Arduino.app and select show package contents

Navigate down to Contents/Resources/Java/hardware/tools - here you find teensy.app, this is your loader
click or right click and open.
 
How are your security settings? It also seems to be that if you right click the application for the first time it remembers that you 'approved' it.
 
I get the same result when running teensy.app directly. I can see the application window for a split second before it crashes.

Right click + Open doesn't make any difference.
 
I also experienced Some problems on OS X yesterday but reinstalling arduino 1.6.2 and the latest teensyduino beta solved the problems.
 
I am using 1.6.3, but I will try 1.6.2 instead.

Is it normal for Teensyduino to only support certain minor versions of the IDE?
 
I wish I knew why Teensy Loader is crashing or not starting up on these Macs.

Could you try running the stand-alone copy, from here: http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/loader_mac.html

It should always at least start up and show the window. If not, could you try Applications > Utilities > Console and see if OS-X is logging any errors when Teensy Loader crashes?
 
Is it normal for Teensyduino to only support certain minor versions of the IDE?

Yes, it's normal that it only supports certain versions. I generally try to support the versions widely used for at least the last year. But the recent rapid pace of Arduino releases has require some compromises.

In the latest beta, I dropped support for Arduino 1.6.2, partly because 1.6.2 has so many bugs, and partly because 1.6.2 was only on Arduino's download page for 5 days (because it had so many bugs, they quickly released 1.6.3 with fixes).

Likewise, when 1.6.3 came out, I dropped 1.6.0 support, also because that version had numerous bugs. If you've got either 1.6.0 or 1.6.2, you really should upgrade, even if you're not using Teensy.

Currently, Teensyduino 1.23-beta2 supports 1.0.6, two versions of 1.6.1, 1.6.3 and 1.6.4. These are all the versions of Arduino within the last year that are good to use.

I'm probably going to keep supporting 1.0.6 and both copies of 1.6.1 for a very long time. Some people really don't like the new 1.6.x series, and 1.6.1 was the last version of Arduino that works on Mac OS-X 10.6.
 
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I should also mention, it seems my 10.7.5 build computer is unable to create programs that work with 10.5. I no longer have any macs running 10.5 or 10.6 for testing. I keep resisting Apple's messages trying to get me to update that machine to Yosemite... because Apple's tools have a terrible tendency to only produce programs that work on the latest versions. My hope it to continue supporting at least back to 10.7 and hopefully also 10.6 for quite a while.

Sadly, it seems 10.5 isn't ever going to work again. I just can't keep a large fleet of macs around for development.
 
Same result with the standalone installer. The data posted in the console is the same too:

5/9/15 16:03:40.912 teensy[4886]: WARNING: The Gestalt selector gestaltSystemVersion is returning 10.9.0 instead of 10.10.0. Use NSProcessInfo's operatingSystemVersion property to get correct system version number.
Call location:
5/9/15 16:03:40.913 teensy[4886]: 0 CarbonCore 0x9831d7e7 ___Gestalt_SystemVersion_block_invoke + 135
5/9/15 16:03:40.913 teensy[4886]: 1 libdispatch.dylib 0x9625e0b5 dispatch_once_f + 251
5/9/15 16:03:40.913 teensy[4886]: 2 libdispatch.dylib 0x9625f0d8 dispatch_once + 31
5/9/15 16:03:40.913 teensy[4886]: 3 CarbonCore 0x982affb8 _Gestalt_SystemVersion + 1050
5/9/15 16:03:40.913 teensy[4886]: 4 CarbonCore 0x982afb69 Gestalt + 150
5/9/15 16:03:40.913 teensy[4886]: 5 teensy 0x0002d95a _ZN27wxMacDataItemBrowserControlD0Ev + 2538
5/9/15 16:03:40.913 teensy[4886]: 6 teensy 0x00032d36 _ZN11wxAccelListD1Ev + 8774
5/9/15 16:03:45.980 loginwindow[74]: ERROR | -[PersistentAppsSupport saveLogoutPersistentState:finalSnapshot:] | Attempt to insert app with NULL bundle ID
 
I'm also seeing this issue on Arduino 1.8.8, Teensyduino 1.45, and a Teensy 3.2.

Arduino console:
Code:
Unable find Teensy Loader.  (p)  Is the Teensy Loader application running?
quitexit status 1
Error compiling for board Teensy 3.2 / 3.1.

The Teensy app does launch, and seems to be able to communicate with the Teensy (Teensy UI status changes when I hit the reset button on the Teensy)

Console errors:
Code:
10759711: Error #17  (os/kern) invalid right attempting to shed send right on port ( port:3187/0xc73 rcv:0,send:0,d:2 limit:0).
teensy_ports is not entitled for IOHIDLibUserClient keyboard access
teensy_ports is not entitled for IOHIDLibUserClient keyboard access
teensy_ports is not entitled for IOHIDLibUserClient keyboard access
teensy_ports is not entitled for IOHIDLibUserClient keyboard access

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
You're using MacOS, right?

Those errors look like you've got some sort of special sandboxing or fine-grain permissions/restrictions on what programs can do.

The "teensy_post_compile" program needs permission to use localhost networking to talk to the Teensy Loader application.

Other programs, "teensy_reboot", "teensy_ports" and "teensy_serialmon" (all installed inside the Arduino.app application bundle, in Contents/Java/hardware/tools) need permission to talk to USB devices. I'm not familiar with that particular IOHIDLibUserClient error message, but my best guess is MacOS is restricting programs from accessing hardware.
 
Thank you for the quick response!

Yes I'm on MacOS. What you suggest sounds very reasonable. I'll Google around to see how to change those settings on MacOS, as I'm not familiar with the process.

EDIT:
teensy_ports works from the command line, output:
Code:
/Applications/Arduino.app/Contents/Java/hardware/tools/teensy_ports 
{
  "address": "usb:14100000",
  "online": true,
  "label": "[no_device] (Teensy) Bootloader",
  "vid": "16C0",
  "pid": "0478",
  "iserial": "517978",
  "boardName": "Teensy",
  "protocol": "Teensy"
}
{
  "address": "usb:14100000",
  "online": true,
  "label": "HID=16c0:0478.ff9c.21 (Teensy 3.2) Bootloader",
  "vid": "16C0",
  "pid": "0478",
  "iserial": "517978",
  "boardName": "Teensy 3.2",
  "protocol": "Teensy"
}

teensy_reboot shows the same message as the Arduino console
Code:
Unable find Teensy Loader.  (r)  Is the Teensy Loader application running?
 
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Which version of MacOS are you using?

I tested again just now with 10.14.2 on a Macbook Air. Works fine.

Any chance you have extra firewall software installed? So far I've not heard of any such programs causing trouble on Macs, but it's definitely been an issue on Windows with older versions of Zonealarm (needlessly) blocking localhost connections.
 
I'm using 10.13.6 (17G65) on a MacBook Pro. I'm going to upgrade to Mojave tomorrow, maybe that will help. (fingers crossed)
 
I upgraded to Mojave (fresh install) and everything works perfectly now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks again for the help!
 
Not sure if a coincidence but I had visual studio code open running programs on localhost 3000 and 4000. When I quit VSC the error went away.
 
This happened again to me even after quitting VSC. killing processes on local host 4000 and 3000 worked. For mac: run `lsof -i tcp:4000` and then `lsof -i tcp:3000` in terminal
 
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