I have had no major issues for a while but this weekend I upgraded to KStars 2.9.7 on my new Macbook Air and noticed a new problem.
Everything works great, and even a sequence of images starts without a problem.

But when I let the computer idle while exposures are being taken, an issue develops slowly. At about 1 minute in, the spinning flower/timer starts to sputter as it is spinning. If I do nothing, the system seems to be fine for a while but after the exposure is done it locks up and must be force quit. Oddly, if I tap anywhere on the screen when I see the sputtering, it will fix itself and continue well for another minute. If I wait too long, as soon as I tap on the screen it locks up immediately. I have that small window of time to stop the crash, from about 1 minute to 2 minutes into an exposure.

I did this all night, after two reboots, and it is consistent. I thought it must be related to the computer trying to sleep, or conserve power, or screen save. But I turned all of those features off and it is still a problem. I will try again later this week and see if I can get a good log of the freeze up. I will also try using my MacBook Pro which has the previus version of KSTARS. I will test that, install the latwest KSTARS and try again to see if the issue appears there too.

Peter

When this happens, can you check Memory/CPU usage and see if there is anything out of the ordinary?