AndroidStudio crash on macOS Big Sur beta

Any chance that you have external monitors connected? I'm experiencing the same issue and the crash happens whenever any Android Studio window is in the external monitors. This is a known and resolved JDK bug (see https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-2790). I know of two workarounds, but they are both not ideal:

  1. Don't connect any external monitors, or...
  2. Change your JDK runtime to a version with the bug resolved:
    1. You will need to install a plugin to allow you to choose your runtime, see https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/articles/206544879-Selecting-the-JDK-version-the-IDE-will-run-under.
    2. Download and install a working runtime from https://adoptopenjdk.net/nightly.html?variant=openjdk11&jvmVariant=hotspot (i.e. version 11.0.9 works, no crashes but you lose some functionality such as accessing Preferences and Layout Editor)
    3. From Android Studio, choose the new runtime (Help > Find Action... > Choose Runtime...)

Unfortunately I have yet to find a runtime that doesn't compromise some kind of functionality in AS.


The IDE freezing when opening tabs is due to macOS's default settings. Go to System Preferences > General > Prefer tabs and select never.

Alternatively, you can run this command in Terminal if you want to keep tabs for all other apps except Android Studio (the ideal solution):

defaults write com.google.android.studio AppleWindowTabbingMode manual