“Fixing” HipChat Crashes on Mac OS X Lion

In case this helps anyone else on the Internets and Googles out there:

If HipChat refuses to start for you on your Mac like this (“HipChat quit unexpectedly”):

then you might be able to fix it by unchecking “Automatic graphics switching” in the Mac System Preference “Energy Saver” pane.

For some reason Adobe Air (the platform HipChat runs on) doesn’t like it when “Automatic graphics switching” is enabled.

After HipChat is running you can safely re-enable “Automatic graphics switching” to save energy when running on the battery.

Unfortunately right now you’ll have to disable “Automatic graphics switching” *every time* you want to start HipChat. Bummer. The HipChat folks and Adobe are all aware of this issue, hopefully we get a fix soon.

(I stumbled across this “fix” here on the Adobe forums: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4080052#4080052)