Google – How to Fix Persistent Crashes in Backup and Sync

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I have set up Google Backup and Sync to automatically synchronise certain folders on my iMac to Google Cloud both for backup and enabling sharing with other computers.

The process works well.

But one of the components, FinderSyncAPIExtension.appex, crashes regularly with a report containing the following:

Path:                  /Applications/Backup and Sync.app/Contents/PlugIns/FinderSyncAPIExtension.appex/Contents/MacOS/FinderSyncAPIExtension
Identifier:            com.google.GoogleDrive.FinderSyncAPIExtension
Version:               1.0 (1)
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           FinderSyncAPIExtension [58644]

...

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread:        0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes:       KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x000007fb606d1640
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal:    Segmentation fault: 11
Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0xb
Terminating Process:   exc handler [58644]

As far as I can tell the crash is triggered every time I save a new file to a folder that is synchronised. Also, the process seems to restart as synchronisation still seems to happen but getting a crash every time I save a file is annoying.

This has persisted across multiple MacOS versions (currently on 11.1).

I doubt this is a widespread problem and might result from a clash with some other add-in or system process but I have so far found no obvious culprit.

Any suggestions as to the cause? Or how to narrow down the likely cause?

Best Answer

I solved this problem by turning off the option "Show file sync status icons and right click menu", in Google Backup and Sync -> Preferences -> Settings.