Mac : Wireshark won’t start and ask for X11 with OSX Mavericks

By | October 27, 2013

With the latest OSX Mavericks 10.9 release, Wireshark refuse to open and complain about X11.

First, make sure you have the latest XQuartz installed. It can be found at :

http://xquartz.macosforge.org/

(Make sure to logoff/login again to your session once you installed it.)

Then, if you attempt to open up Wireshark, you’ll end up with a message saying Wireshark cannot find X11 :

Where is X11?

Just select XQuartz manually here :

/Applications/Utilities/XQuartz.app/Contents/MacOS/X11

You might see the Wireshark icon in your Dock, however the window might not be visible yet. Close the program.

Open XQuartz and type the following command :

/Applications/Wireshark.app/Contents/MacOS/Wireshark

Wireshark should open normally from now.