A Practical Fix for Chrome Not Opening on a Hackintosh

I recently encountered a stubborn issue on my Hackintosh where Google Chrome refused to launch. The browser, usually reliable, would not start no matter how many times I clicked the icon. To tackle this, I decided to run Chrome from the terminal and observe any error messages that might provide clues to the problem.

Using the terminal, I navigated to the Chrome application directory and initiated it in incognito mode:

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --incognito

This command revealed a series of error messages:

chrome_crashpad_handler: --database is required
Try 'chrome_crashpad_handler --help' for more information.
[0120/122011.654659:ERROR:file_io.cc(94)] ReadExactly: expected 8, observed 0
[0120/122011.658139:ERROR:crash_report_database_mac.mm(109)] mkdir : No such file or directory (2)
[47470:259:0120/122011.738754:ERROR:process_singleton_posix.cc(335)] Failed to create /Users/lachlan/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/SingletonLock: Permission denied (13)
[47470:259:0120/122011.739140:ERROR:process_singleton_posix.cc(476)] Could not open singleton lock: Permission denied (13)
[47470:259:0120/122011.739344:ERROR:chrome_main_delegate.cc(554)] Failed to create a ProcessSingleton for your profile directory. This means that running multiple instances would start multiple browser processes rather than opening a new window in the existing process. Aborting now to avoid profile corruption.

The key takeaway from the errors was that Chrome was facing permission issues, particularly with accessing certain files in its application support directory. This hinted that the problem might be resolved by adjusting the file permissions.

To fix this, I ran the following commands in the terminal to change the owner and permissions for the Chrome directory:

sudo chown -R $(whoami) ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/
sudo chmod -R u+rw ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/

These commands made sure that my user account had the proper permissions to access and modify Chrome’s files.

Additionally, the errors mentioned an issue with SingletonLock. While I didn’t address this directly in my fix, it’s worth noting that removing this lock file can sometimes resolve issues where Chrome thinks another instance is already running:

rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/SingletonLock

After adjusting the permissions, I tried opening Chrome again, and this time, it launched successfully. This experience reinforced the importance of understanding and managing file permissions on a Hackintosh, and how sometimes, a few terminal commands can resolve what initially seems like a complex problem.