Resolve Katalon Studio Hanging and Crashing

Users may experience Katalon Studio randomly hanging and crashing. Similar symptoms include Groovy script syntax highlighting disappearing, or the code in Script Mode appearing entirely white (no colors). These indicate that Katalo Studio is hanging and about to crash.

Root cause

This is a known bug from Groovy Eclipse, the plugin bundled with Katalon Studio. The bug causes abnormal memory or thread behavior that leads to this issue.

Workarounds

Workaround 1: Disable "Mark Occurrences"

The "Mark Occurrences" feature in the Java/Groovy editor has been identified as a trigger for this bug, as it continuously scans the active file and places additional load on the already-unstable Groovy Eclipse engine.

1. Open Katalon Studio and navigate to Window > Preferences > Java > Editor > Mark Occurrences.
2. Uncheck "Mark occurrences of the selected element in the current file".
3. Click Apply and Close, then restart Katalon Studio.

note

If disabling Mark Occurrences does not resolve the issue, also try overriding the startup command in katalon.ini by following workaround 2.

Workaround 2: Override the command in the katalon.ini

1. Go to Katalon Studio installation folder
2. Open katalon.ini file in a text editor.
3. Locate command -Dchromium.args=--disable-features=SystemNotifications with 1 of these commands: -Dchromium.args=--disable-features=SystemNotifications --disable-gpu --disable-software-rasterizer -Dchromium.args=--disable-features=SystemNotifications --disable-gpu --disable-gpu-compositing --disable-software-rasterizer

Workaround 3: Clear workbench state and relaunch with clean flag

1. Close Katalon Studio completely.
2. Navigate to the following directory and delete workbench.xmi:

[Katalon Studio installation path]\config\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.e4.workbench

3. Open a terminal, navigate to the Katalon Studio installation directory, and run:

.\katalon.exe -clean -clearPersistedState

4. Relaunch Katalon Studio normally after the command completes.

note

If the issue persists after trying these workarounds, a full reinstallation of Katalon Studio may be required. Ensure the user is using the latest available patch version.

Workaround 4: Disable Combined Hover

When you hover on a keyword, its description appears as a pop-up. Scrolling through this pop-up sometimes causes Katalon Studio to crash.

To disable keyword description on hover:

1. Go to Preferences > Java > Editor > Hovers
2. Uncheck the Combined Hover option.
3. Click Apply and Close, then restart Katalon Studio (optional but recommended).

Workaround 5: Force SWT Browser to use IE (katalon.ini)

1. Close Katalon Studio completely.
2. Go to Katalon Studio installation folder.
3. Open katalon.ini.
4. Add the following as new lines to the bottom (keep existing entries):

-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.DefaultType=ie
-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.UseDesignMode=false

5. Save the file and relaunch Katalon Studio.