Empty launcher window on macOS

Anki Help
1

I’m encountering the same issue, but I can’t open Anki at all due to this. Removing then reinstalling does not resolve the issue. Whenever I open Anki.app, my machine asks for permission to open “launcher”, which just opens an empty terminal when I click OK.

2

Would you mind recording a short video of what you’re seeing, then posting it somewhere like imgur.com? If you remove the AnkiProgramFiles folder, does that make a difference?

3

Thanks, dae. I uploaded a video to imgur. Compression is unfortunately really high, but you should still be able to view what’s going on. I’m not allowed to post links, but the unique imgur ID is: 6MKiC9x

Removing the ankiprogramfiles folder does not change anything. Still same as in the video.

The terminal window that is visble in the video is just the brew info information and shows as follows:

brew info anki

==> **anki**: 25.02.6

https://apps.ankiweb.net/

Installed

/opt/homebrew/Caskroom/anki/25.07.4 (74MB)

Installed using the formulae.brew.sh API on 2025-07-24 at 21:56:54

From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/blob/HEAD/Casks/a/anki.rb

==> **Name**

Anki

==> **Description**

Memory training application

==> **Artifacts**

Anki.app (App)

==> **Analytics**

install: 1,307 (30 days), 3,602 (90 days), 12,119 (365 days)
4

Would you be able to include the full imgur link in backticks? I’m having trouble locating the image.

5

Didn’t think of that. Here it is

https://imgur.com/a/6MKiC9x
6

I should add that my default shell is fish. Now realising this might be relevant, yet at the same time I do not see any failed commands having run on the terminal that opens.

edit: manually starting the “launcher” command from the terminal (with fish shell) starts it succesfully. It starts downloading all it needs and I can open Anki.app thereafter.

Though the fact that the command does not run when launching Anki from the Applications folder suggests something might still be broken in the distribution (through homebrew specifically maybe?).

7

I tried installing fish and using ‘sudo chsh’ to change my default shell. It didn’t seem to trigger this behaviour. Did you make the default some other way?

I noticed in your screencast that the security pop-up talks about a “UNIX app”. It shouldn’t do that normally, and it makes me wonder whether Homebrew’s package was damaged in some one. If you uninstall it and install Anki directly from GitHub, what happens?