Booked Solid has taken over Chrome on my Mac: extra windows, no new browser, and a Mac that will not restart

Chrome on your Mac has stopped being yours. You noticed that BS has started opening multiple instances of chrome, and that they cause my Mac to lag and not restart. When you click Chrome yourself, it's not letting me open a new chrome browser, and it's almost like it's reserving chrome for itself. When you try to shut it down, I can't even force close the chrome browser. And when you give up and reboot, you get the other half of it: my Mac will not restart, it loops until it times out. This is a real bug in the app, it is fixed, and this article is how you get your machine back.

First, the part that matters: this was not you

You did not switch anything on by accident and you did not set anything up wrong. This one is ours. The performer who first reported it read it exactly right when he said the app was reserving Chrome for itself, because that is very close to what was literally happening. So do not spend an evening auditing your own settings looking for the mistake. There is no mistake to find.

What is actually happening

Booked Solid keeps its own Chrome running in the background so Otto can do browser work. It runs with its own separate profile and no window at all, which is why you never see it and never think about it. Two things went wrong with that on a Mac.

• While that hidden Chrome is running, clicking Chrome yourself puts you into the app's copy instead of opening your own window. On macOS, a Chrome process that is already running captures the click from the Dock, even a copy that has no windows open. Nothing new appears. That is the reserving-Chrome-for-itself feeling, and it is why no new browser window shows up no matter how many times you click.
• When the app does not shut down cleanly, its hidden Chrome is left behind. A crash or a force quit skips the app's own shutdown step, the leftover copy keeps running, and the next launch starts another one on top of it. The copies pile up across restarts. That pile is what produces the multiple chrome windows, a Chrome that appears to ignore you when you try to close it (it has no windows for you to close, so there is nothing to quit), and an OS restart that hangs while macOS waits on every one of them.

Stop it right now, in about two minutes

Do these in order. This is the mitigation, not the cure, but it gives you your machine back immediately.

1. In Booked Solid, open the Connections tab and scroll down to Tool access. Find Web browsing (Chrome) and choose Turn off. That is the card that matters here; the separate Web browsing (Safari) card is a different connection and is not involved. This stops the hidden Chrome that is running now, and stops new ones from starting.
2. Restart the Mac once. With nothing respawning, it should restart normally. If it still hangs, use Apple menu > Force Quit (Cmd+Option+Esc), or open Activity Monitor and search for Chrome, and quit every Google Chrome entry you see there before you restart. Activity Monitor cannot tell you which entry is ours, so this closes your own Chrome windows too: save anything you have open first.
3. Your own Chrome is yours again.

The honest tradeoff while Web browsing (Chrome) is off: Otto cannot browse the web for you. Everything else keeps working exactly as before, and you turn the switch back on after the update below.

The version that actually fixes this is 1.11.11

Be careful with version numbers here, because an earlier partial fix did not solve this and it is easy to stop too soon. 1.10.0 made the hidden Chrome warm up invisibly with no startup window. That removed one visible symptom and it did not fix the takeover or the pile-up. If anyone tells you 1.10.0 is enough, it is not.

The proper fix shipped in 1.11.11 and does four separate things:

• On every start, the app finds and closes any of its own hidden Chrome copies left behind by a crash or a force quit. This cleanup runs even when Web browsing is switched off, because orphans from an old version can still sit on Chrome.
• Quitting the app now shuts its own Chrome down firmly, even when that Chrome has hung and ignores a polite close. That leak is what built the pile in the first place.
• On Macs, the hidden browser no longer starts with the app at all. It starts with your first browsing task and closes itself again after 15 minutes with no browsing, so it is not squatting on Chrome for a whole session in which you never asked Otto to browse anything.
• Together, those mean a Dock click on Chrome opens your own Chrome again. The one honest exception: while Otto is actually browsing, and for the 15 idle minutes after, the app's copy really is running, and on macOS any running Chrome takes the Dock click. Outside that window, Chrome is yours.

Worth stating plainly, because it is the first thing people ask: the cleanup can only ever touch the app's own hidden copies. It identifies them by the app's own private browser profile, so a Chrome window you opened yourself can never match it and will never be closed. Your tabs are safe.

You need 1.11.11 or later. Later builds carry the fix forward, so 1.11.13, 1.11.16 and anything newer are fine.

How to recover properly, in this order

1. Quit Booked Solid fully.
2. Force quit Chrome if any copies are still running: Cmd+Option+Esc, or Activity Monitor and search for Chrome. Restarting the Mac once does the same job if that is easier.
3. Update the app. Click Check for updates next to the logo at the top left, or download the newest build from booked.kivimedia.co/download. Confirm you land on 1.11.11 or later.
4. Turn Web browsing (Chrome) back on under Connections > Tool access.

Any leftover hidden Chrome dies the moment the updated app starts, so you do not need to hunt for them again after this.

Dead ends, so you do not burn time on them

• Force quitting the Chrome copies without turning Web browsing off or updating first. Almost everyone tries this, and on the old version it buys you a few minutes at best. The performer who reported this restarted the app and watched it start opening multiple chrome browsers again straight away. Turn the switch off first, or update first, and then force quit Chrome.
• Hunting for the runaway Chrome window so you can close it. There is no window to find. The app's Chrome runs windowless on purpose, which is exactly why closing and force-quitting seem to do nothing. Activity Monitor is the only place those copies are visible.
• Looking for the support bundle under Help me. It is not there. We sent someone on that goose chase once already and it is worth correcting in writing. The bundle lives in the Settings tab, on General: scroll to the support section and click Generate Support Bundle.

A note for Windows and Linux

Leftover copies could accumulate on Windows and Linux too, and the 1.11.11 startup cleanup runs on every platform. The specific part where clicking Chrome routes you into the app's copy instead of opening your own is macOS behaviour, which is why this article is written for Macs.

If it still happens after you update

Then it is a new problem and we want to see it, not hear about it second hand. Turn on Support logging in Settings > General, reproduce it once, then click Generate Support Bundle in the same section and attach the file to a ticket. Tell us which version you are on, and whether the extra copies appear the moment the app launches or only after Otto does a browsing task. Those two details point straight at which half of this is misbehaving.

Still stuck? Submit a ticket from this help center and we will take it from there.