docusaurus start - Failed to open browser

[cehenriques]

Have you read the Contributing Guidelines on issues?

• I have read the Contributing Guidelines on issues.

Prerequisites

• I'm using the latest version of Docusaurus.
• I have tried the npm run clear or yarn clear command.
• I have tried rm -rf node_modules yarn.lock package-lock.json and re-installing packages.
• I have tried creating a repro with https://new.docusaurus.io.
• I have read the console error message carefully (if applicable).

Description

When running docusaurus start I get the following console errors:

$ docusaurus start
[INFO] Starting the development server...
[SUCCESS] Docusaurus website is running at: http://localhost:3000/
● Client ██████████████████████████████████████████████████ (10%) building /Users/chenriques/Documents/navigator-docs/node_modules/webpack/hot/dev-server.js                                                         Failed to open browser Microsoft Edge with AppleScript  995 |   if (!isURLInstance(fileURLOrPath))
 996 |     return fileURLOrPath;
 997 |   return Bun.fileURLToPath(fileURLOrPath);
 998 | }
 999 | var { Error, TypeError } = globalThis;
1000 |   let err = new Error(message);
                   ^
error: Command failed: osascript openChrome.applescript "http://localhost:3000/" "Microsoft Edge"
openChrome.applescript:848:858: script error: A property can’t go after this identifier. (-2740)

   code: 1,
 killed: false,
 signal: null,
    cmd: "osascript openChrome.applescript \"http://localhost:3000/\" \"Microsoft Edge\"",
 stdout: "",
 stderr: "openChrome.applescript:848:858: script error: A property can’t go after this identifier. (-2740)\n",

      at genericNodeError (node:child_process:1000:13)
      at exitHandler (node:child_process:103:28)
      at emit (node:events:98:22)
      at #maybeClose (node:child_process:768:16)
      at #handleOnExit (node:child_process:520:72)

● Client ██████████████████████████████████████████████████ (58%) building /Users/chenriques/Documents/navigator-docs/node_modules/css-loader/dist/cjs.js??ruleSet[1].rules[7].use[1]!/Users/chenriques/Documents/navFailed to open browser Brave Browser with AppleScript  995 |   if (!isURLInstance(fileURLOrPath))
 996 |     return fileURLOrPath;
 997 |   return Bun.fileURLToPath(fileURLOrPath);
 998 | }
 999 | var { Error, TypeError } = globalThis;
1000 |   let err = new Error(message);
                   ^
error: Command failed: osascript openChrome.applescript "http://localhost:3000/" "Brave Browser"
openChrome.applescript:848:858: script error: A property can’t go after this identifier. (-2740)

   code: 1,
 killed: false,
 signal: null,
    cmd: "osascript openChrome.applescript \"http://localhost:3000/\" \"Brave Browser\"",
 stdout: "",
 stderr: "openChrome.applescript:848:858: script error: A property can’t go after this identifier. (-2740)\n",

      at genericNodeError (node:child_process:1000:13)
      at exitHandler (node:child_process:103:28)
      at emit (node:events:98:22)
      at #maybeClose (node:child_process:768:16)
      at #handleOnExit (node:child_process:520:72)

● Client ██████████████████████████████████████████████████ (100%) emitting after emit                                                                                                                               client (Rspack 1.5.8) compiled successfully

Even though it throws these errors, it still manages to open the application on Microsoft Edge.

Reproducible demo

No response

Steps to reproduce

1. Run docusaurus start on macOS 26 with Microsoft Edge as the default browser.

Expected behavior

The app should start without errors.

Actual behavior

The app starts with errors.

Your environment

• Public source code:
• Public site URL:
• Docusaurus version used: 3.9.1
• Environment name and version: Microsoft Edge 141.0.3537.71, Bun 1.3.0
• Operating system and version: macOS Tahoe 26.0

Self-service

• I'd be willing to fix this bug myself.

[slorber]

Weird, have you tried with another browser?

I think it's related to AppleScript and macOS 26, but can't be sure.

[cehenriques]

Weird, have you tried with another browser?

I think it's related to AppleScript and macOS 26, but can't be sure.

I have three browsers installed on my laptop: Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Brave. It seems that docusaurus start tries to open the local environment in the default browser, but it also checks for other installed browsers and ends up throwing errors for all Chromium-based ones (Edge and Brave).

When I changed my default browser to Safari, the local app opened correctly in Safari, but the same two errors for Edge and Brave still appeared.

Then I installed Firefox and set it as the default browser. When running docusaurus start, it opened the app in Firefox and again only showed errors for Edge and Brave. So the issue seems to be specific to Chromium-based browsers.