A very bizarre issue just started happening recently (Jan 2025). Anytime I tried to edit my keymap in IntelliJ, the entire application would crash.
The fix ended up being:
1. Open Help > Edit Custom VM Options..
2. Add this line: -Dsun.awt.mac.a11y.enabled=false
3. Restart IDE (File > Invalidate Caches > Just Restart)
Interestingly enough, I passed the crash log to Claude and asked what might be happening, and Claude mentioned that some interaction with the Accessibility system was likely the culprit!
I don't know what the root cause was, but sure enough the a11y keyword confirms some strange interaction with the MacOS accessibility system.
Of course, I didn't come up with this solution out of thin air. I dug it out of this YouTrack bug report.
EDIT: I found the root IntelliJ issue here.
The fix ended up being:
1. Open Help > Edit Custom VM Options..
2. Add this line: -Dsun.awt.mac.a11y.enabled=false
3. Restart IDE (File > Invalidate Caches > Just Restart)
Interestingly enough, I passed the crash log to Claude and asked what might be happening, and Claude mentioned that some interaction with the Accessibility system was likely the culprit!
I don't know what the root cause was, but sure enough the a11y keyword confirms some strange interaction with the MacOS accessibility system.
Of course, I didn't come up with this solution out of thin air. I dug it out of this YouTrack bug report.
EDIT: I found the root IntelliJ issue here.