Does the developer of a Mac OS X app get the crash reports when the app crashes?

If an app crashes while I'm using it in OS X I get a little (apparently) OS-driven dialog that lets me "report the crash to Apple". It sends along a stack trace and some other system information.

Does this crash information get shared with the app developer of the app in question at the time the crash occurred?


Mac OS X Reference Library Technical Note TN2123 states:

CrashReporter performs two useful actions:

  • When a program crashes, CrashReporter will record a crash log (typically into ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/), and inform the user by logging a message to the system logging facility.
  • 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 (see Figure 1). If the user clicks the Report button, CrashReporter displays another dialog that shows the details of the report (see Figure 2) and allows them to comment it before submission.

And not much further along, states:

In this technote I explain how to interpret crash logs that you have obtained from end users.

I believe this implies that the information is not automatically shared with the developer. The developer needs to "obtain" the crash logs from the end users' ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/ folder.


Recently announced by Apple (Dec. 17, 2010), the iTunes Developer Guide [PDF] illustrates how a Mac App Store developer may receive crash log reports for their apps. This isn't true for apps downloaded outside of the Mac App Store, unless the developer has coded that functionality in manually.


I think Apple is currently preparing a system for developers of apps in the Mac App Store. The iTunes Connect interface already shows a "Crash Logs" button, so I guess it will be possible this year.


The crash reports seem available in the Crashes organizer. See the guide Analyzing Crash Reports for details.