· Roon/Roon Server crashing upon launch, will not run since update
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· This setup is unchanged since working fine prior to recent Roon update: Roon Server running on a Mac Pro 5,1 (Sonoma); Mac Studio (Sonoma) is Roon client pushing audio to a WiiM. All devices connected on one typical home network via wired ethernet w/dedicated LAN IPs
It looks like the crash occurs while RoonServer is creating/registering an AppKit status bar item, and the failure triggers an internal assertion in SkyLight/AppKit.
Thanks for the detailed write-up, and for including the analysis of the crash, the “Abort trap: 6” with the SkyLightOld.dylib / AppKit assertion around the status bar item is a useful lead.
To dig into this properly, though, we’ll need the full macOS crash report rather than a summary of it. The raw report contains the complete backtrace, thread states, and binary versions that let us pinpoint exactly where RoonServer is aborting.
Here’s how to grab it on your Mac Pro (the machine running Roon Server):
Open the Console app (Applications → Utilities → Console).
In the left sidebar, select Crash Reports (you may also see it listed as “User Reports”).
Look for the most recent entries named RoonServer, the crash timestamp should line up with when you last tried to launch it.
Right-click that entry and choose Reveal in Finder, or open it and use Share → Save. The file will end in .ips (newer macOS) or .crash.
Alternatively, you can find the files directly in Finder:
Go to Go → Go to Folder… and paste: ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports
Sort by date and grab the newest RoonServer_*.ips file.
Please upload that full .ips (or .crash) file to the link below so we can take a look. If it’s too large to attach, you can zip it first, or let me know and I’ll point you to another way to send it.
Ho @benjamin , Thanks for the reply and looking at my issue. I’ve just uploaded the latest Roon.app .ips file to the external site as directed. There are older .ips files also—I am happy to upload them also.
Nothing after 2.67 will load on my Mac. The update is a downdate. Fortunately I had the old version DMG file and was able to reinstall 2.67. So the guidance is do not update until this is cleared up? My Server About panel still tells me “An update is awaiting relaunch”, which is one way to not have Roon anymore.
There is a fix, and it should apply to you despite what our release notes say about macOS versions.
Roon 2.71 build 1683 fixes Roon Server failing to start with exactly the crash you are seeing, in the AppKit status bar item. We described it as affecting macOS 12 and 13, and your Mac reports 14.4.1, so on the face of it you should not have been affected.
Your crash report explains why you were. It shows SkyLightOld.dylib in the stack, which is not a standard part of macOS. It is installed by OpenCore Legacy Patcher, which replaces some system frameworks with older versions so that newer macOS releases will run on unsupported hardware. A Mac Pro 5,1 cannot run Sonoma officially, so we assume that is how yours is set up. Please confirm if that is right.
The practical effect is that although your Mac reports 14.4.1, the graphics framework underneath is an older one, and it behaves like the versions the bug affected. So the fix should work for you.
Please download build 1683 from
and install it over the existing copy in Applications, then launch it from Applications rather than from the mounted disk image. Let us know whether Roon Server starts.
If it still crashes, please upload the new crash report and we will treat it as a separate case, since a patched system framework puts your setup outside what we can test against.
@Jeffrey_Pinhey, on your question: the hotfix above is what you have been waiting for, so it is worth updating now rather than holding off. One caution though. You mentioned reinstalling 2.67 from an old DMG. Going backwards is not something we would recommend in general, because the database format is upgraded with each release and older builds cannot read an upgraded one. If that worked for you it means your database was still on the older format. Once you move to 1683 you will not be able to go back to 2.67 again without restoring a backup taken beforehand, so please make sure you have a current backup before you update.
Thanks, @vadim ! I installed build 1683 as directed and opened it on the Mac Pro (my server). RoonServer did not start on its own but did when I opened it by looking at the Roon.app contents.
Thanks very much for your help and getting my music playing again!