Bug report: Frequent crashes starting from Zotero 8

lifesciences · 2026-03-26T02:14:01+00:00

I recently installed Zotero 8, but it keeps crashing. Sometimes it crashes immediately upon opening, and other times it crashes while I’m reading a document. This issue started right after I upgraded from Zotero 7 to 8. I never experienced any crashes with Zotero 7 before. I’ve since removed all plugins, but the crashes still occur. I even uninstalled Zotero 8 and reinstalled Zotero 7, but the crashing persists. I haven’t been able to resolve this issue, and it’s seriously affecting my user experience.

dstillman · 2026-03-26T02:16:33+00:00

Make sure you have in fact removed all plugins. In particular, recent versions of Better BibTeX were causing frequent crashes.

If you mean that it's closing completely, you should email a crash report from your OS to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread, but if you're getting crashes in both 7 and 8, the problem likely isn't in Zotero — it's something else that you've installed or something on your computer.

lifesciences · 2026-03-26T07:19:07+00:00

Thank you for your response.

I have double-checked and can confirm that there are no plugins left in Zotero (including Better BibTeX). However, Zotero 8 still crashes frequently. When I downgrade to Zotero 7, the crashes become less frequent, but they still occur occasionally.

I am using Windows 11 Home Chinese Edition.

I've now uninstalled Zotero 8 and reinstalled Zotero 7. I wasn't able to locate crash reports from the Zotero 8 installation, but I'll continue using Zotero 7 and will collect and send any crash reports if the crashes happen again.

Thanks again!

dstillman · 2026-03-31T18:25:41+00:00

We would need a crash report from Windows.

lifesciences · 2026-04-17T04:34:32+00:00

Recently, I upgraded directly from Zotero 7 to Zotero 9.

For the first two days after the upgrade, the application ran without any crashes.

However, after less than a week, the frequent crashes resumed. Removed all plugins – the crashes persisted.

System Environment: Windows 11 Home Chinese Edition.

Error report ID: 1129295755

dstillman · 2026-04-17T04:48:06+00:00

We still can’t help without a crash report (and even then, this is likely to be caused by malware or something else on your system, since we haven’t received other reports of this).