Ganesh75

Q: iBooks "Couldn't communicate with a helper application"

Hi,

I just did a clean install of Mavericks on my iMac and am trying to use iBooks. 

I was able to do an initial open of the application.  However, once I tried to import any PDFs and EPUBS, iBooks quit and I've haven't been able to restart the program.  Every time I relaunch the application, it shutsdown and then I get a message that says, "Couldn't communicate with a helper application".

 

I've searched the forums and found a few things but all the solutions suggested talk about doing some terminal commands to reset some ACL and permissions.  I tried these suggestions to no avail.

 

Anyone have any ideas?

Posted on Dec 11, 2013 1:21 PM

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Q: iBooks "Couldn't communicate with a helper application"

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  • Helpful answers

  • by mieleBauknecht,

    mieleBauknecht mieleBauknecht Mar 3, 2014 6:52 AM in response to Ganesh75
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 3, 2014 6:52 AM in response to Ganesh75

    same here. Apple software becomes crappier with every new release. Occurs when adding a large number of books (pdf's) 

  • by justasg,

    justasg justasg Sep 28, 2014 1:47 AM in response to Ganesh75
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 28, 2014 1:47 AM in response to Ganesh75

    I tried my luck and it actually got my iBooks working again.

     

    Screen Shot 2014-09-28 at 11.24.15.png

    When you add a PDF, it starts a process in background called "com.apple.BKAgentService". I think that this process scans your PDF, gathers some data interesting to iBooks and puts it into a local database. It is wrong for this process to run in the background because it uses lots of resources and really affects other applications (i.e. its hard to type here because my mac lags behind me typing), and iBooks do not show any signs of background activity. Because you do not get an immediate confirmation that some actions are taking place, you try to import those files again.. and again. And after some time you decide to kill iBooks app, because it became unresponsive. And this is how you break local database files

     

    I got it working for me. I am not responsible if these actions break something for you, do it at your own risk. After deleting those files my library was still intact, it only had to be rebuilt (i.e. cover images showed up only after a few seconds when iBooks finally started).

     

    What I did to fix this is deleting of these broken files:

    1) kill/close iBooks app, if it's still open and broken

    2) delete these folders:

    Screen Shot 2014-09-28 at 11.42.56.png

    To be specific, these folders are:

    /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooksX/Data/Library/Caches/co m.apple.ibooks

    /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooksX/Data/Library/Caches/co m.apple.iBooksX

    3) start iBooks

  • by Computer Curmudgeon,

    Computer Curmudgeon Computer Curmudgeon Nov 8, 2014 7:30 AM in response to justasg
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 8, 2014 7:30 AM in response to justasg

    Didn't solve the problem for me on Yosemite.

  • by Computer Curmudgeon,

    Computer Curmudgeon Computer Curmudgeon Nov 8, 2014 8:46 AM in response to Computer Curmudgeon
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 8, 2014 8:46 AM in response to Computer Curmudgeon

    After deleting the files, I connected up my ipad and did a sync. Then did a reboot and ibooks is now working.