Why do I see the error, The application “Dock” does not have permission to open “(null)” when starting MATLAB after updating to MacOS 15.1?

MATLAB was launching without issue on my Mac until updating to MacOS Sequoia 15.1. When launching MATLAB I see the following error; The application “Dock” does not have permission to open “(null)”. 

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This error affects the Intel versions of MATLAB R2024a and older releases on macOS 15.1 and has been resolved as of macOS 15.2. If you are affected by this error, it is recommended that you update macOS to 15.2. 

The Intel version of MATLAB R2024b is not affected, and the "Native Apple Silicon" versions of MATLAB (R2023b and newer) are not affected.

If you have an Intel Mac, install the Intel version of MATLAB R2024b using the installer from mathworks.com/downloads

If you have an Apple Silicon Mac, consider uninstalling MATLAB then install the Native Apple Silicon version of R2024b instead by using the installer from mathworks.com/downloads

For more information, see:

MATLAB on Apple Silicon Macs

https://www.mathworks.com/support/requirements/apple-silicon.html

As a workaround to run Intel versions of MATLAB R2024a and older on macOS 15.1 or 15.2, you may be able to launch MATLAB from terminal like this:

/Applications/MATLAB_R20XXx.app/bin/matlab -maci64

Note: The R20XXx must be edited to correspond to your install release of MATLAB, e.g. R2021b.

This error may be resolved in a future update to macOS 15.

[Walter Roberson]

In my experience, it is enough to use

/Applications/MATLAB_R20XXx.app/bin/matlab

without the -maci option.