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How to fix MySQL Workbench 8 for Mac

MySQL Workbench 8 contains a bug that prevents it from starting on Macs. Don’t worry: it’s easy to fix!

If you try to launch MySQL Workbench on a newly installed Mac or if you have recently upgraded your Python installation, there’s a decent chance that MySQL Workbench won’t be able to start:

If you try to start MySQL Workbench via the command line with the --verbose flag, you can see why it doesn’t work:

$ "/Applications/MySQLWorkbench.app/Contents/MacOS/MySQLWorkbench" --verbose
Fatal Python error: initfsencoding: unable to load the file system codec, sys.path = ['/Applications/MySQLWorkbench.app/Contents/Resources/libraries', '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python37.zip', '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7', '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/lib-dynload']
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'encodings'

Current thread 0x0000000110e8ae00 (most recent call first):
[1]    5814 abort      "/Applications/MySQLWorkbench.app/Contents/MacOS/MySQLWorkbench" --verbose

The message shows that MySQL Workbench uses Python 3.7. First make sure this version is available on your machine. You easily do this by running the following Homebrew command:

$ brew install python@3.7

Python should have been installed to /usr/local/Cellar/python@3.7/:

$ ls /usr/local/Cellar/python@3.7/
3.7.10_2

Make note of the version number, because you’ll need it later.

The message says that MySQL Workbench expects to find the Python framework at /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework, which doesn’t exist. You can verify this by executing the following command:

$ ls /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework
ls: /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework: No such file or directory

In my case, the version number was 3.7.10_2. The version number on your machine may be different. You can create the symlink as follows:

$ sudo ln -fs /usr/local/Cellar/python@3.7/3.7.10_2/Frameworks/Python.framework /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework

Make sure to replace 3.7.10_2 with the version that is installed on your machine.

If you followed these steps, you should be able to start MySQL Workbench now. Happy databasing!