Mac Os Sierra keep logging out !!

Not convinced that it is Safari - I use Chrome, so perhaps the culprit is common to both Safari and Chrome (ie. WebGL)

Here's an article about WebGL which describes the same symptoms (audio keeps playing, keyboard non-responsive etc.) :
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/_9SzQ8CiP10;context-place= forum/chrome

So, trying something different, I've disabled Hardware Acceleration in Chrome:

Will report back with observations.

Bad day today, in excess of 60 freezes/GPU unresponsive crashes.

I found this gem support advice, which describes how to fix file/folder permissions on Sierra (which were previously handled by Disk Utility repair, but that functionality was removed).

I ran these from Safe Mode. Noticeable difference in the past 2 hours, no more GPU unresponsive crashes.

https://support.apple.com/en-za/HT203538

Please try this and post your results?

I have the same issue and it seems to happen randomly only when I have an external monitor attached. I have tried everything accept migrating my account with no luck. Migrating to a new account would be very difficult and time consuming. Hopefully Apple will fix this problem soon!

My worry is that I have no belief that Apple is even aware of this problem and so is not at all addressing it. Does anybody know if Apple is aware? It has existed for the life of Sierra and no change. What makes us think that Apple will be addressing the issue?

PRAM reset worked for a few days then issue came back for me.

Reset SMC.

Random log outs for all user accounts.

No particular software being used.

Disconnected second monitor from iMac.

Turned off TimeMachine.

Running 10.12.2, but issue started with 10.12.1

Running in safe mode is the only way I can guarantee that it won't log me out.

Been in contact with support. They suggested trying safemode. Unable to contact them since!

Needs fixing.

This is not going to be helpful for many of you. But I was having random logouts (mainly when doing things in FCPX) and I stopped them by switching back to the default OSX drivers, instead of using the NVIDIA web driver that you need to download when you've put an NVIDIA graphics card in your Mac Pro (old tower version).

It's definitely a GPU issue. Don't the new MacBooks sometimes have an option to go from the 2 different graphics cards inside (discrete vs integrated or whatever they call it)??

Again, that'll be frustrating for many of you who have basic Macs with just the intel GPU. But I dunno, the fact that it completely stopped for me when swapping graphics card drivers points to the likelihood of this definitely being graphics related, as well as what I can see you guys have posted about with the WindowServer crashes.

Good luck

Same issue here. Macbook pro Retina 13-inch late 2012, macOS 10.12.2.

It happens randomly, and it has never happened to me before the last update. I'm not doing anything different from what I used to do: having Safari, Mail, Xcode, and iTunes open, these last two in full screen.

Respectfully, WHAT makes any of us think Apple is monitoring this discussion, gives a hoot, or intending to actually fix it. I have had this problem ever since I upgraded to Sierra. I have also lodged a report with Apple. They CLOSED it saying it was a duplicate. I found the similar report lodged and it had been closed saying it was "fixed"!

My God, what of testing does Apple do? Of course its NOT fixed! So in the closing of the report they add a note that if the problem continues, create a New Incident Report. Oh yes, eat my time, close my report, fix nothing.

Very Frustrating Apple! What's up with this?

I had this issue every time I 'fast switched' user. At first, if the other user was logged out, then, every switch (where some time, say half a day, passed). Try to switch and find myself at the login screen where all users are logged out.

Trying to test this, I created a new user. Well... seems that creating a new user account actually fixed the problem!

That's not a real fix, but if it happens to someone else (on switching users), that's something to try.

I dis-agree with all the above. the problem is not common to all apple users and likely just a few. I've never had the problem of mystery logout in ANY situation except for the one i confirmed was my own fault 🙂

I have mistakenly logged out several times by pressing "the log-out" keyboard combination. once i checked help for all ways to log-out, and refused to use them, it didn't happen again. coincidently i now can't remember the keystoke and keystroke/mouse combination - so i better go check! guess what? i believe the keys you are thinking are for "fast forward / pause" are the culprits. check your "viewer" - it is likely NOT the same keys as iMovie or Preview uses (which may steal the keys for the purpose - blocking their normal log-out effect).

i suggest you are using the keyboard arrows or something (for pause or fast forward) incorrectly and are pressing the "log-out" key/mouse combination.

OR i suggest perhaps the people above are trying to watch a movie full screen using non-apple viewer ... hackware (ie, they updated "flash" through some nefarious website - instead of waiting for apple to release a Safari or iMovie or Preview update with Sierra?)

Good news everyone!

I was on 10.12.3 beta 4 just a week ago and the logout problems seemed to be gone! Earlier today, the official release was seeded to the public and I updated to it. No auto-logout crashes anymore. To be sure, update, then boot into Safe Mode (hold the SHIFT key when restarting Mac before Apple Startup screen) leave it for 30 seconds to clear any corrupted cache files, then reboot into normal mode. Smooth performance over here on MacBook Pro 13 inch 2011 (2.3ghz i5, 240gb SSD, 8gb RAM).

-yusay

i applied the 10.12.3 update this morning and have already been logged out twice so the new update does NOT solve the problem for me. Since the problem is in the GPU system many different apps and actions may trigger it and even if they fixed it in one app the problem may continue in others until they figure out why the GPU is crashing in the first place.

I can see a diagnostic_agent run on my system just milliseconds before the first DumpGPURestart message, I don’t know if that has anything to do with it. I can also see several minutes prior error messages from Spindump telling me that Safari networking com.apple.WebKit.Networking had reached a memory high water mark and then immediately thereafter another one saying that malloc had failed for it. I suspect on my system that this is the problem. There are webpages that seem to trigger it for me more often. I’ve never had the problem switching to full screen and back again, but I don’t do that very often.

What I do often is look at live updated web pages for various system status things and many images are pushed to those pages to update graphs. It seems like as these images are replaced they are never removed from memory until the page is closed even though I can see the no-cache messages in the developer info page about the webpage so it should not be keeping them forever. It seems to happen much faster when I have a screen sharing session open as well but that might be confirmation bias as it is so hard to tell and there are no messages referencing that application in the diagnostic or other logs that I can find.

This is really remarkably frustrating.

I see you don't have "require a password for system wide settings". It's better you leave that checked and enter a password whenever it's requested.

((off topic. I had the same issue (years ago) on debian linux with Firefox - but worse. If one simply left it open overnight - magically it's cache would get full and freeze the computer hard (so i kept closing ff, flushing cache, regularly, always closed when not using). later I compiled my "own nightly" of firefox and it never happened again (it was the binary, and being a binary i cannot say what was wrong or what was in it, who made it).))

First, you have to understand a web site designed for microsoft browsers might expect (or *demand*) that IE is being used. It's a competitive market and it's a shifting target, unfortunately. Because too many people are free to change "critical standards", you'll likely never see any computer in your lifetime that doesn't have issues with some websites that other browsers display fine.

You did a good job describing messages/logs you saw. And you already know (i'm going by what you said so far) that to avoid logout you only need to avoid one website. Note you have settings in safari to "act like another web browser" and or (show pages in an alternate manner). You might try some of those alt settings to see if that one website is now usable.

HOWEVER - to solve your real problem more is needed. what more could i ask?

please (all of you above!) specify exactly what web sites and pages are an issue so that others can "REPRODUCE" your problem. if the issue is not reproducible by others it may be very difficult to find help (excepting using xcode debugger, some really deep digging). also comment upon whether you think any "web plugins" are in use and what they are. if i can reproduce it, i may be able to see what is going on and even offer a fix.

give us a better picture of the logs (best is to cut and paste it, if you can). you mentioned some logs you saw. say what program you used to see the logs (did you say two different logs?), and show the log entries as exactly as you can (ie use screen shot, or jot down what you can and show it to us in a manner we'd recognize viewing the same logging program). were they all safari logs? were they two logs you saw in a list of all logs?

Your safari browser though is very good looks and very good multimedia (even 3d, sound) - and also it integrates apple's app features and hardware excellently. If you had a different browser (say, opera), you'd get none of that, or some but very slowly.

I don’t view a lot of video and rarely if ever use anything fullscreen so I don’t see the problem there, but I do have it with Safari just viewing regular pages, especially if they are open for an extended period of time. The specific website I can most easily duplicate the problem with is not a public site but a security camera interface which rapidly and constantly updates thumbnail images on the site and eventually the whole system will hang with the spinning beach ball. If I’m lucky the system will come back for a second and the Safari window will draw completely back and if I immediately hit the close button on it then I can continue. If the system doesn’t give me an opportunity to close the window once it starts to happen then I will be logged out.

I can run the page in question for a week in Firefox and this never happens, but running in Safari I can only run it for a few hours sometimes before I get logged out.

I will try to build something that I can host for others to try to see if you can make it happen too. There are some reports in the console that are related, I will include some of them here:

Actually the support boards here won’t let me just cut and paste them so I put them in a zip file for anyone who’s interested. There are 4 different safari web content diagnostic messages associated with the log outs in there. They are all about high memory watermark reports and happen not long before the logout. There are 63 different kernel gpu restart message files with the full content representing 3 different logouts, each time the problem happens it generates about 20 different GPU restart error logs. And lastly a spin report from the window manager when it most recently happened this morning. This morning I was able to get control back enough and close the browser window that had gone all black and forestal the actual logout.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/547252/crashlogs.zip

<This is a Direct Download Link>

Even now on 10.12.4 beta 7 this problem still happens.

I found a way to remedy this problem for a short period of time by turning off reduce motion. It only crashes on my laptop when reduce motion is on. However, I really like reduce motion and I always test it out every new beta if the problem has been solved, but unfortunately the problem is still there. I even used a new user and the problem still occurred, meaning it's not a problem with my content, it's the problem with the software and the hardware. It would be helpful if you guys posted what Macs you use and which ones auto logout.

Mine is a 2011 13-inch Macbook Pro, upgraded to 8gb ram and 240 gb SSD.

I really hope the devs are paying attention to this thread as MacOS is really a good and stable software.