[macOS 26 Beta] New popup "Firefox Nightly" is running in the background after it was closed
Categories
(Core :: Widget: Cocoa, defect, P3)
Tracking
()
People
(Reporter: haik, Unassigned)
References
(Blocks 1 open bug)
Details
Attachments
(5 files)
Screenshot showing the new popup
On macOS 26 Beta 1 (25A5279m), I noticed the following prompt about Nightly running in the background. This appears to be a new prompt in macOS 26 Beta. I don't know when the popup was triggered, but earlier I had hit a known Nightly-only crash and restarted Nightly after that. I tried clicking "Do Not Allow" and that resulted in the current instance of Nightly being quit.
More debugging is needed to determine what in Firefox is triggering this prompt and if it can be avoided.
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Reporter | |
Updated•11 months ago
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Comment 1•11 months ago
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For what it's worth, I've seen the exact same popup for Terminal. This must be a new macOS "feature".
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Comment 2•11 months ago
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This can also happen with "Mail". Apparently it can be triggered by closing all of an app's windows without quitting the app itself. As one of the commenters on this link says, "after it was closed" is misleading, and should be changed to "after all its windows were closed".
(But see comment #4 below.)
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Updated•11 months ago
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Comment 3•11 months ago
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I've not been able to reproduce these popups. I tried: 1) about:crashparent, then restarting Firefox; 2) Closing all of Firefox's windows without quitting Firefox; 3) The same with Terminal. In all these cases I waited several minutes for a popup to open, without ever seeing one.
I did these tests on Beta2 (build 25A5295e). It's possible the popups only appear in Beta1 (build 25A5279m). In which case this really is an Apple bug and they've fixed it.
My Terminal popup (comment #1) appeared in Beta1. But even in Beta1, these popups don't seem to appear often. So maybe it's just an accident I haven't seen any in Beta2. I'll post again here if I do see one.
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Comment 4•10 months ago
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I think I finally understand what's going on here: The "[Application] running in the background after it was closed" popups were a false start on a new attempt by Apple to inform users that binaries have been installed that can run in the background.
The apps listed in the popups on macOS 26 Beta 1 (Firefox, Terminal and Mail) don't in any meaningful sense run in the background. So these popups were a bug, which (apparently) was fixed in Beta 2.
Now, in Beta 3, new popups have started appearing whenever you install an application that contains binaries that can genuinely run in the background: '"[Binary]" can run in the background. You can manage background activity in Login Items & Extensions'. These are allowed by default. But you can deny them permission in the Login Items & Extensions panel in System Settings.
The "App Background Activity" part of this panel has been around since macOS 13 (Ventura). But this is the first time popups have been used to draw users' attention to it.
So the explanation in comment #2 turns out to be wrong.
(But see comment #9 below.)
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Comment 5•10 months ago
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Comment 6•10 months ago
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Most of these items come from running the installer for the GPG Suite. But note the single entry for Terminal.
The partition from which these screenshots come now runs macOS 26 Beta 3. But Terminal was added, erroneously, in Beta 1, when the popup opened that I reported in comment #1.
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Comment 7•10 months ago
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We can probably close this as fixed by Apple. But let's keep it open a while longer to see if any more non-background apps show up in the new popups.
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Comment 8•10 months ago
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(In reply to Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired) from comment #7)
We can probably close this as fixed by Apple. But let's keep it open a while longer to see if any more non-background apps show up in the new popups.
Speaking of which, note the last popup in the "App Background Activity popups" from comment #5. "GPG Suite" shouldn't be in this list. Only the binaries listed above it can actually run in the background. The total number of "GPG Suite" items in the App Background Activity section (comment #6) is four, while five popups (including "GPG Suite") are listed.
So Apple still has some work to do. But things are much better now than they were in Beta 1.
We should still keep an eye out for App Background Activity popups that only include a non-background application, in case Apple hasn't completely fixed the bug from Beta 1.
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Comment 9•10 months ago
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(In reply to Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired) from comment #4)
The "App Background Activity" part of this panel has been around since macOS 13 (Ventura). But this is the first time popups have been used to draw users' attention to it.
Actually, the same popups show up installing GPG Suite in macOS 15.5 and 14.7.6.
If this isn't new functionality, the "[Application] running in the background after it was closed" popups are even more puzzling. At least I haven't seen any since Beta 1.
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Comment 10•10 months ago
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Comment 11•10 months ago
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Comment 12•10 months ago
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For what it's worth, I've now seen the "Firefox is running in the background after it was closed" popup myself, on macOS 26 Beta 3 (build 25A5306g).
It was after Firefox (140.0.4) had crashed, and was trying to submit a crash report. This took a very long time (more than 30 seconds), and I tried to close the window that gets displayed while the crash report is being submitted. It took another 30 seconds for the window to close, and the popup appeared immediately afterwards.
So Apple hasn't (yet) gotten rid of these incorrect popups. But they may be appearing less often.
Firefox now appears (on this partition) in Login Items & Extensions under App Background Activity.
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Comment 13•10 months ago
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More people are starting to notice these popups:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOSBeta/comments/1lirs1i/is_anyone_else_getting_constant_alerts_for/
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Reporter | |
Comment 14•6 months ago
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Closing. We haven't seen reports of this since the 26.0 Betas. Apple appears to have fixed this.
Description
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