I recently encountered a stubborn issue on my Hackintosh where Google Chrome refused to launch. The browser, usually reliable, would not start no matter how many times I clicked the icon. To troubleshoot it, I ran Chrome from the terminal so I could see any error messages that might point to the cause.
Using Terminal, I launched Chrome directly from its application bundle in incognito mode:
/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --incognitoThat command revealed a series of errors:
chrome_crashpad_handler: --database is required
Try 'chrome_crashpad_handler --help' for more information.
[0120/122011.654659:ERROR:file_io.cc(94)] ReadExactly: expected 8, observed 0
[0120/122011.658139:ERROR:crash_report_database_mac.mm(109)] mkdir : No such file or directory (2)
[47470:259:0120/122011.738754:ERROR:process_singleton_posix.cc(335)] Failed to create /Users/lachlan/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/SingletonLock: Permission denied (13)
[47470:259:0120/122011.739140:ERROR:process_singleton_posix.cc(476)] Could not open singleton lock: Permission denied (13)
[47470:259:0120/122011.739344:ERROR:chrome_main_delegate.cc(554)] Failed to create a ProcessSingleton for your profile directory. This means that running multiple instances would start multiple browser processes rather than opening a new window in the existing process. Aborting now to avoid profile corruption.The important clue was the Permission denied message for Chrome’s profile directory, especially the failure to create or open SingletonLock. That suggested Chrome could not write to files under its Application Support directory.
To fix the permissions, I ran:
sudo chown -R "$(whoami)" ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/
sudo chmod -R u+rw ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/The first command changes ownership of the Chrome profile directory back to the current macOS user. The second command makes sure that user can read and write files in the directory.
If Chrome still complains about SingletonLock, and you have already confirmed that Chrome is not running, removing the stale lock file can also help:
rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/SingletonLockAfter adjusting the permissions, I opened Chrome again and it launched successfully. The issue looked complicated at first, but the terminal output made the root cause clear: Chrome could not access its own profile files. On a Hackintosh, where permission and filesystem quirks can show up after migrations or system changes, checking ownership and write access is often a practical first step.