How to fix a crashing BMW Download Manager on macOS
This is a very short and very specific article, but I couldn’t find this information on the internet yet and wanted to share this solution with others experiencing this issue.
If you want to update your BMW navigation system’s map, you have three options:
- Go to your local dealership
- Download the update over-the-air
- Download the map manually using BMW Download Manager and install it in your car via a USB stick
The BMW Download Manager is available for Mac and Windows. If you, like me, cannot launch the Mac version because it crashes instantly, you may need to restore your macOS fonts to system defaults:
- Open Font Book (Applications → Font Book)
- File menu → Restore Standard Fonts → Proceed
Your custom fonts will be moved to a separate directory (/Library/Fonts (Removed) and ~/Library/Fonts (Removed)). Now BMW Download Manager should work again.
After using BMW Download Manager, you can restore the fonts by installing them again. If you cannot find the folders in Finder, open them by copy/pasting the folder paths via the Finder menu: Go → Go to folder.
If you’re a developer at BMW wanting to fix this
This issue looks like a general Java 8 issue and is similar to the issue described here. I found it by checking the logging at ~/Library/Application Support/JWrapper-BMWDownloadManager/logs/BMWDownloadManager-BMWDownloadManagerApp*.log .
