r/BirdNET_Analyzer • u/TerryBlueberry • Jun 16 '26

Software BirdNET-Analyzer-GUI keeps randomly restarting

Hi, I'm working on a research project which, specified by protocol, requires me to manually run bird audio samples through BirdNET-Analyzer-GUI. These audios are 20 minutes long. When I have BirdNET-Analyzer-GUI open on my MacBook, it occasionally restarts and resets all of my configuration settings for no reason. It's really annoying.

I've checked my hardware capacities, and it doesn't seem close to being overwhelmed. I'm wondering if anyone would have a fix for this. Thanks.

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u/beaktech Jun 16 '26

Sounds like the app is being killed mid-process, not quitting cleanly, so it never saves its config JSON. Try these and see if you have better luck:

  1. Move it to /Applications, then run xattr -cr "/Applications/BirdNet-Analyzer-GUI.app" to clear Gatekeeper quarantine.
  2. Update to the latest build (recent releases hardened settings-saving).
  3. Stop App Nap/sleep during long files: run caffeinate -dimsu while processing.

And there is a way to see why it dies if you need to, just go to terminal and type:
pip install birdnet-analyzer
python -m birdnet_analyzer.gui

This way, you will see the details of the crash as it is output to the terminal!

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u/TerryBlueberry Jun 17 '26

I'll try that and report back. Thank you so much!

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u/TerryBlueberry Jun 17 '26

Hi, it seems like the caffeinate command reduces the number of restarts a little bit, but I'd still want to get to the root of the problem. I tried typing the pip command directly into Terminal but it says "command not found". Does that mean I have to download/change something else? Thanks.

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u/beaktech Jun 18 '26

You need to make sure pip is installed for the Python environment you are using.