MacOS – Manually submit crash reports

crashmacos

When an application crashes, OS X usually presents a little dialog with the opportunity to report the bug to Apple.

However, in my current situation there seems to be a problem with the window server so although I get the aforementioned dialog, I cannot interact with it, and hence cannot submit the crash report. A reboot is required to make the system once again responsive.

But I’d really like to get this report to Apple because it’s symptomatic of a problem with Lion which regularly crashes my machine, and I’d like to get this fixed as soon as possible.

There seem to be two alternatives here:

  1. Use the feedback form on Apple’s website
  2. Use bugreport.apple.com

Neither is ideal: the first is aimed at non-technical customers and doesn’t really offer the possibility to provide technical details, let alone crash reports. The second presents a website that seems to date from the 90’s and apparently hasn’t been touched since. That, and I’ve already submitted a bug report there once, which has subsequently been deleted without comment. Neither fact instils much confidence in me that Apple actually cares about this platform.

Ideally, I’d like to trigger the “report a crash” dialog manually. Is this somehow possible? I haven’t found any way to do so in Console.app.

Best Answer

Since the opt in status is no Longer present in the Lion Console app, you can't see whether you are opted in or out.

My system does resume sending non-received reports when the next crash or force quit happens. I would poke and force quit the problem and watch that all the reports get submitted.

It is extra hassle to file it formally at http://bugreport.apple.com - but that way you are assured a human or two touches the report rather than it going into the summary reports.