Pages 15.2 files crashing

[eldho]

I just did a supposed bug fixing update via the app store for Pages and now after opening any pages file it crashes after a couple of seconds. This is being discussed on the Apple Forums but with no solutions being found so I am opening this thread here hoping for better results. I am fully up to date with Tahoe26.4.1 and am having the same experience on both my M4 Max Studio and my M2 Mac Book Air. I did nothing new apart from the updating of the Pages app. It very much looks like a bug being introduced by Apple here. It seems that not everyone is being affected by this but I would suggest caution re this update for anyone who has not already done so.

 

[IvyKing]

I just did a supposed bug fixing update via the app store for Pages and now after opening any pages file it crashes after a couple of seconds. This is being discussed on the Apple Forums but with no solutions being found so I am opening this thread here hoping for better results. I am fully up to date with Tahoe26.4.1 and am having the same experience on both my M4 Max Studio and my M2 Mac Book Air. I did nothing new apart from the updating of the Pages app. It very much looks like a bug being introduced by Apple here. It seems that not everyone is being affected by this but I would suggest caution re this update for anyone who has not already done so.

Good to know - I will hold off updating Pages until this issue gets fixed.

 

[Slartibart]

what does the crash report in the console say?

 

[eldho]

The console report says rather a lot - and was being sent to Apple each time. I do not understand the technical detail of the report but looking through it there seems to be relevant parts such as:

Triggered by Thread: 0, Dispatch Queue: com.apple.main-thread
and
Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 AppKit 0x189f4c474 +[NSApplication _crashOnException:] + 256
1 AppKit 0x189a34270 -[NSApplication reportException:] + 460
2 AppKit 0x18975a1f0 -[NSApplication run] + 548
3 AppKit 0x1897327b0 NSApplicationMain + 880
4 Pages 0x102792754 0x102754000 + 255828
5 dyld 0x184ec3da4 start + 6992
and
Thread 0 crashed with ARM Thread State (64-bit):
x0: 0x00000009af638f00 x1: 0x00000009aeac1c6e x2: 0xffffffffffffffed x3: 0x00000009af63924d
x4: 0xffffffffff488a01 x5: 0x0000000000000020 x6: 0x00000009af638f00 x7: 0x000000000000038d
x8: 0x00000001f10e4000 x9: 0x02c5f3d46a0b003a x10: 0x02c5f3d46a0b003a x11: 0x00000000000000ff
x12: 0x0000000000000019 x13: 0x00000009a957b180 x14: 0x01000001f10aa741 x15: 0x00000001f10aa740
x16: 0x00000001852893c0 x17: 0x00000001f26c0ca8 x18: 0x0000000000000000 x19: 0x00000009b122bf60
x20: 0x00000009acd91480 x21: 0x0000000000000001 x22: 0x0000000000000000 x23: 0x0000000000000000
x24: 0x0000000000000118 x25: 0x00000001ea2dd000 x26: 0x00000001ea2d0000 x27: 0x00000001f10e4000
x28: 0x00000001ee70a000 fp: 0x000000016d6ab230 lr: 0x0000000189f4c46c
sp: 0x000000016d6ab1f0 pc: 0x0000000189f4c474 cpsr: 0x60000000
far: 0x0000000000000000 esr: 0xf2000001 (Breakpoint) brk 1

You did ask! If this means anything useful to you that you are able to share I would certainly appreciate that.

 

[Slartibart]

this is just the ”death rattle” 😁 What’s missing to diagnose further: the exception type and message (should be in the report header — NSException name + reason string). Without the exception reason string, the ARM registers above tell you nothing actionable. can you copy&paste the report header?

 

[eldho]

Process: Pages [898]
Path: /Applications/Pages Creator Studio.app/Contents/MacOS/Pages
Identifier: com.apple.Pages
Version: 15.2 (7046.0.71)
Build Info: Pages-7046000071000000~2
Code Type: ARM-64 (Native)
Role: Foreground
Parent Process: launchd [1]
Coalition: com.apple.Pages [1044]
User ID: 502

Date/Time: 2026-04-13 01:16:20.1667 +1200
Launch Time: 2026-04-13 01:16:16.1663 +1200
Hardware Model: Mac16,9
OS Version: macOS 26.4.1 (25E253)
Release Type: User

Crash Reporter Key: D93552CC-19E3-6F36-AFCB-4B78B5ED37B9
Incident Identifier: 62112931-B352-47F5-90D1-1AB9314481F2

Time Awake Since Boot: 79 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Triggered by Thread: 0, Dispatch Queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000189c14474

Termination Reason: Namespace SIGNAL, Code 5, Trace/BPT trap: 5
Terminating Process: exc handler [898]

I assume that this is what you were requesting. Thanks for attending to this.

 

[Significant1]

Feed it to an LLM, and it will give suggestions to try. It doesn't crash here M1 MBA, so it is not a general problem.

 

[Slartibart]

this is still missing a bit of info- it shows that Pages Creater crashes 4 seconds into the start up. we would need the exception backtrace and NSException reason string from the full report to understand this better.

Either you provide the full crash log here or you follow @Significant1 suggestion.

 

[Fishrrman]

Just wondering, but...
Do you still have the "old version" of Pages around (version 14.x)?
If so, can you open the files by using it instead of the newer version?

 

[eldho]

Thank you everyone for your attention to this.
I don't know anything about LLM personally so that is a non starter for me.
The full crash log seems rather huge to upload here in full. I searched for the NSException line and did not manage to find it. I will have another go later on when I have the time to do so.
And thank you for the suggestion of trying the old version of pages which fortunately, out of caution, I have kept but forgot that I had done so. I can indeed open the files using it instead of the newer version. Thank you for that suggestion.
I have been using LibreOffice for new work in the meantime but it would be a dauntingly mammoth task to transfer all my files over.
I will now use the old version of pages in the meantime until this all gets sorted out.

 

[Significant1]

By LLM I mean one of the big online ai chat. Gemini.google.com, chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai etc. It is not difficult or complicated

 

[bxs]

For past week or so I've been using the the new free from subscription Pages from the Creator Studio package. At first blush all seemed to be AOK and created Pages documents without issues.... but then surprisingly found some serious issues with this the new Pages that did not happen with the older non-Creator-Studio Pages.

1) The New Pages will gobble up memory when simply left unattended. This issue does not happen with the old Pages.

On my M3 Ultra Studio that has 96 GB of memory, Pages exhausted all of available user application memory.

Using the new Pages on my new MacBook Neo with its 8GB memory is a real problem for me as it consistently will exhaust the 8GB of memory in short order.

2) Running the new Pages on two Mac's using the same iCloud Pages document will mean any change made to one and then 'saved' will cause the other Pages to Quit. This issue does not happen with the old Pages.

3) If the Pages document used with the new Pages was created by the old Pages the user gets informed that another App has made changes to the Pages document when user attempts to Save the document. I speculate that this is because the document being used by the new Pages has some 'left over' embedded data in it related to the old Pages.

IMO... the user should hold onto the old Pages and use it to avoid these issues I post here. Unfortunately, the old Pages can no longer be downloaded from the App Store so for those users wanting to avoid the above issues they should NOT delete the old Pages from their Macs.

For me, I've returned all my Pages work back to using the old Pages to avoid these issues I post here.

I've personally posted feedback to Apple about these issues, and hope they get resolved without too much water passing under the bridge.

 

[eldho]

I found a solution that works for me in the Apple Community forum. Having the tool bar showing rather than hidden makes the difference between files staying open and crashing!! A very strange little bug. I hope this works for any others affected by this quirk of Pages 15.2

And what is even more strange is that having done this with the tool bar the files now stay open even with the tool bar hidden again. It seems that somehow simply using the toolbar cleared some bug from the system.

 

[ignatius345]

By LLM I mean one of the big online ai chat. Gemini.google.com, chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai etc. It is not difficult or complicated

I feel like people can still troubleshoot their Macs without boiling a lake somewhere. (And, in fact, the OP did as it turns out.)

 

[MonkeyButler247]

I've been experiencing the same problem for several weeks since an update. I'd reverted to an old version so that I could continue working.
I've just installed the Apple Creator Studio and the problem has gone away.
Also I read somewhere else that showing the toolbar in Pages means it will stop crashing.
Hope that helps and good luck.

 

[HandsUp]

I found a solution that works for me in the Apple Community forum. Having the tool bar showing rather than hidden makes the difference between files staying open and crashing!! A very strange little bug. I hope this works for any others affected by this quirk of Pages 15.2

And what is even more strange is that having done this with the tool bar the files now stay open even with the tool bar hidden again. It seems that somehow simply using the toolbar cleared some bug from the system.

Thank you!!!! I spent hours today troubleshooting this problem, first with ChatGPT and then on the phone with Apple. Nothing worked until I just tried your solution and it’s completely fixed the glitch. Sooo grateful!!