Summary
/connect-chrome (headed mode) crashes consistently ~15 seconds after launch on macOS 26.5 Tahoe beta. Headless mode is unaffected.
Environment
- macOS: 26.5 (build 25F5042g) — Tahoe beta
- Playwright: 1.58.2
- Chromium: 145.0.7632.6
- gstack: v0.15.13.0 (commit 03973c2)
- Hardware: Apple Silicon (arm64)
Repro
B=~/.claude/skills/gstack/browse/dist/browse
$B stop; sleep 1
rm -rf ~/.gstack/chromium-profile
$B connect
# Browser window appears, shows welcome page
# Wait 15 seconds — window disappears silently
$B status # → Mode: launched (crashed back to headless)
Timing data (5 consecutive runs)
| Run |
Alive at 5s |
Alive at 10s |
Alive at 15s |
Notes |
| 1 |
✅ |
✅ |
❌ |
Fresh profile |
| 2 |
✅ |
✅ |
❌ |
With --disable-gpu |
| 3 |
✅ |
✅ |
❌ |
With --disable-gpu --disable-software-rasterizer --no-sandbox |
| 4 |
✅ |
✅ |
❌ |
Extension disabled (extensionPath = null) |
| 5 |
✅ |
✅ |
❌ |
Nuked profile + all flags |
Crash is exactly at the 15s mark every time. The browser.on('disconnected') handler fires and the server exits with code 2.
What was ruled out
- Extension loading — disabled
findExtensionPath(), still crashes at 15s
- GPU compositing —
--disable-gpu has no effect
- Profile corruption —
rm -rf ~/.gstack/chromium-profile before each run, still crashes
- Sidebar agent — no 15s timer in
sidebar-agent.ts
- Shared memory —
--disable-dev-shm-usage has no effect
- Sandbox —
--no-sandbox has no effect
Root cause
This is upstream in Playwright's launchPersistentContext with headless: false on macOS 26 (Tahoe). Similar issues have been reported on earlier macOS versions:
Headless mode ($B goto, $B snapshot, etc.) works perfectly. Only the visible window crashes.
Suggested fix
Probably needs to be fixed upstream in Playwright. In the meantime, consider:
- Detecting macOS 26+ and warning users that headed mode is unstable
- Adding a
--headed-keepalive flag that auto-reconnects on crash
- Filing against microsoft/playwright with this repro
I put this together after having Claude Code investigate, search, etc. as much as possible.
Summary
/connect-chrome(headed mode) crashes consistently ~15 seconds after launch on macOS 26.5 Tahoe beta. Headless mode is unaffected.Environment
Repro
Timing data (5 consecutive runs)
Crash is exactly at the 15s mark every time. The
browser.on('disconnected')handler fires and the server exits with code 2.What was ruled out
findExtensionPath(), still crashes at 15s--disable-gpuhas no effectrm -rf ~/.gstack/chromium-profilebefore each run, still crashessidebar-agent.ts--disable-dev-shm-usagehas no effect--no-sandboxhas no effectRoot cause
This is upstream in Playwright's
launchPersistentContextwithheadless: falseon macOS 26 (Tahoe). Similar issues have been reported on earlier macOS versions:Headless mode (
$B goto,$B snapshot, etc.) works perfectly. Only the visible window crashes.Suggested fix
Probably needs to be fixed upstream in Playwright. In the meantime, consider:
--headed-keepaliveflag that auto-reconnects on crashI put this together after having Claude Code investigate, search, etc. as much as possible.