For me, and I assume not a few of us, once Script Debugger ceases to work on the latest macOS (assuming we’re running it in “production”), our scripting days will come to a close, kicking and screaming. Can we just keep a running “sound off” as OS updates are rolled out to track/count this down?
How about using Apple’s Script Editor?
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I already see some issues on Tahoe, sadly. When switching to Script Debugger from another app after SD hasn’t been in use for some time, there’s a beachball that keeps SD unresponsive for half a minute or so.
SD 8.0.10, any version of Tahoe.
It’s not the end of the world but maybe a sign of further issues to come.
Obviously, we’ll have to do this once we don’t have a choice. But you know just like all of us that compared to Script Debugger, Apple’s Script Editor is a shameful piece of junk.
No smart-assery intended, much less offense, and forgive me for belaboring the obvious, but…
In 2025, isn’t AppleScript itself is a “shameful piece of junk?” It’s been not quite a decade since Apple fired Sal Soghoian for caring about advanced users of macOS. No one but the usual short-term profit obsessed shareholders and dead-eyed corporate sharks though this was smart, but there if there’s a foreseeable future in which it changes, I hope someone will tell me how to get to it as soon as possible.
AppleScript is a zombie language we tolerate only because none of us can either fix, replace, or apparently, live without it. Give this unpleasant fact, Script Debugger’s days were always numbered. No one can be expected to invest heart, time, sweat, or resources in an IDE for a dead language.
AppleScript is the lover who lacks the integrity to dump you so long as you continue to pay for the Netflix subscription. Sadly, entropy is real, and no matter how great the love or disappointment, eventually one just has to move on, even when there’s nowhere to go.
P.S. “For the love of God, Montresor!”, please don’t utter the name “Shortcuts” in my presence. I’m deathly weary of listening to myself rant. 
The Script Debugger crashes more often than Apple’s genuine Script Editor, so I don’t use it unless I absolutely have to.
I have also written and used hundreds of AppleScripts to extend Script Editor, and I can call up highly functional Scripts from the context menu.
For example, my ebooks includes an appendix that includes an extended script that recognizes AppleScript syntax elements and replaces only the variable “tmpColor”. This is something that Script Debugger cannot do.
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Interesting… I’ve been using Script Debugger for years (and ASOC Explorer before that), and they have been rock solid.
For Script Editor, I’m mostly missing these two essential options:
-Code completion
-Apply color to method and handler names
I’m not offended but I am surprised!
To call AppleScript a “shameful piece of junk” seems completely disproportionate. It’s a limited and perhaps eccentric “glue” compared to “real” programming languages but, for me at least, its ability to get stuff done (my work with it has mostly involved Adobe InDesign and InCopy) for dozens and sometimes hundreds of users in busy production environments has been of huge value. I’m still only a moderately competent AppleScripter but without AppleScript’s low bar to entry I wouldn’t even be that.
You say that “Apple fired Sal Soghoian for caring about advanced users of macOS”. I don’t believe that’s true. I met Sal a couple of times including when he came to see the Mac setup on which I was working at the time. (Close to a thousand seats.) He is a very nice fellow but perhaps too nice to get industrial-strength automation tools the attention they needed inside the behemoth that Apple has become.
I certainly wish a more “professional” successor to AppleScript was a priority in the post-iPhone Apple. Until and unless that happens I’m clinging on here!
(I have seen Script Debugger crash very occasionally by the way, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it lose any of my work when it has — not in many years at least. I never don’t have it running on my Mac and will cry bitter tears when it does finally stop working.)
My Uni Detector app (written in AppleScript Mac App Store app) told me Script Debugger and Script Editor’s launch time.
Both tools launch during my Mac operation.
Script Debugger launch and crash 10 or more times frequently than Script Editor.
Some widely varied experiences out there for sure.
- I can count how many times Script Debugger has crashed on me in 30 years on one hand, to which one of you may reply “you weren’t holding it correctly”, or the Dale Earnhardt response “you weren’t trying hard enough”.
- Stepping through code is my #1 reason to mourn the loss - or did Apple add that feature to Script Editor, because I’ve had very few “needs” to even touch SE in the last 25 years…?
- I’m still using AS because I’m in the original “target demographic” - not a programmer, but an advanced “Power User” (can you say “QuarkXPress 3.31r5”?), I’ve been saving $$$$'s and days upon days of people’s time for the last 30 years with this tool, and won’t stop until Apple rips AppleScript out of the operating system.
Just for the record, SD 8.0.10 is working fine for me on Tahoe 26.2, no beachballing.
Here’s my experience with SD’s beachballing. I installed Tahoe on a bootable external drive, for testing. And, boy howdy, it was awful! Every step while debugging, for example, showed a beachball for 5–30 seconds. Painful!
Then I realized that putting Tahoe on a mechanical HD was foolish. So I re-installed it on an external SSD and the result is amazing. There’s virtually no SD beachballing at all. SD 8.0.10 looks great on macOS 8.1. (Am planning to go to 8.2 tonight.)