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Finder crashed recently and I had to force quit it. Problem is that now when I open something with it, all of the files that it had open previously (including the one that caused the crash) try and open, and it crashes again. Is there a way to force Finder to open (one time only) as a clean slate?

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  • Why not just close them then?
    – dhruveonmars
    May 13, 2013 at 16:17
  • Finder hangs as soon as it tries to open the files, because one of the past files caused it to crash.
    – George Pearce
    May 13, 2013 at 16:18

1 Answer 1

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Try deleting the savedState directory:

rm -r ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/com.apple.finder.savedState/

When I tried running killall -kill Finder, that worked, but open -Fa Finder or command-clicking Finder's Dock icon didn't.

You could also try to:

  • Disable ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Finder.plist by temporarily moving it somewhere else.
  • Cause a kernel panic with sudo dtrace -w -n 'BEGIN{panic();}'. There is normally an option to disable restoring state after kernel panics.
  • Temporarily unload the launchd agent with launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Finder.plist. There is normally a dialog about restoring state after crashes, but maybe it's not shown if the program is opened by launchd.
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  • Tried all three - still loading up everything including the crashed file. Thanks for your help though.
    – George Pearce
    May 13, 2013 at 16:56
  • I edited the post to add three more things you could try. If there are any relevant log messages, you could also edit the question to include them.
    – Lri
    May 13, 2013 at 17:14

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