IDE doesn't start after updating to Mac OS Yosemite or Mavericks

Information below is obsolete for the current product versions bundled with Java 8. It applies only to the old product versions that depend on system JDK installed on Mac. As of now, we have resolved most of Java 8 issues for this OS and bundle our custom patched Java version that works the best. In case you have any issues with Java 8, you can switch back to Apple Java 1.6 (must be installed per instructions below). See this blog post for the instructions.

JDK 1.6 is required to run and may be missing on your system. Please install Apple JDK 1.6. There should be a window with the suggestion to install Java when you start the product for the first time, but it could be hidden by other application windows.

Apple JDK 1.6 download: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US (if this link doesn't open in Safari, please try Firefox or Chrome). Make sure to uninstall the old version first (if you have any).

Modifying Info.plist will break the application digital signature and prevent the patch updates. We do not recommend modifying Info.plist file to run under JDK 1.7 or 1.8. The recommended way of overriding JDK version via idea.properties file can be found here.

Current JDK 1.7 and 1.8 versions have several critical issues. We can't default to the new JDK version until these issues are resolved. Please check the list of the known issues below:

• [could be solved with a third-party utility] Always enabled discrete GPU which drains battery for laptop users
• [fixed for black font on light background] Broken subpixel antialiasing
• [fixed] Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts with alt don't work under Oracle Java 7
• [fixed] Crash when navigate to class with java 7
• [fixed] IDE hangs during startup
• [fixed] Frequent crashes
• [fixed] Crash after a few hours of work
• [fixed but should be verified by the user] Crash with EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGABRT)
• [fixed] Crash on system sleep
• [obsolete] Crash on JDK 1.8.0_25
• [not reproducible] Native crash after several days of work
• [should be fixed even in Oracle jdk7] Cannot retrieve host name issue

Issues marked as [fixed] above are fixed only in the custom JDK 1.8 builds provided by JetBrains and bundled with some versions of the products (mostly EAP builds at the moment). We plan to bundle it with all the products eventually.