CrashReporter dialog doesn't show when mac app crashes

Question

I have a Mac app store app that just silently disappears when it crashes. It doesn't show the CrashReporter dialog to give the user a chance to report the crash to Apple.

I see the same behavior on multiple machines. Is there any known reason why this might happen?

According to TN2123:

In addition, if the program that crashed is running as a logged in GUI user, CrashReporter will present the user with a dialog asking them whether they want to submit a bug report to Apple

What does "running as a logged in GUI user" mean? Does a window have to be visible?

Update:

I was reading the manpage for ReportCrash, and found the following:

For application crashes (but not background process crashes) ReportCrash will display a dialog notifying the user that the application unexpectedly quit and offering to reopen the application or send the report to Apple. For developers, the behavior of this dialog can be adjusted using /Developer/Applications/Utilities/CrashReporterPrefs.app which is installed as part of the developer tools.

I ran CrashReporterPrefs and changed my CrashReporter mode to Developer. When I ran the app and triggered the crash, the CrashReporter dialog was shown!

So I guess the question now is: What's the difference between an "application" crash and a "background process" crash?

Answer 1

If your app uses LSUIElement or LSBackgroundOnly, it's a “background process” for the purpose of determining whether to show the Crash Reporter. (Other “background processes” include UNIX-land daemons, such as the Apache web server, and processes started from SSH or telnet connections.)

Answer 2

Since CrashReporterPrefs no longer comes with developer tools, you can change the behavior to show the dialog for daemons by running this command in the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType Developer