Contributors to this thread:

i had to roll back to emacs v28.2 on osx (ventura). magit on v29.1-1 was super-slow and, generally, frames would unpredictably lock up and stop accepting input. it's not even obvious where i'd report this issue...

#emacs

@toddsundsted: i have been trying to figure out what this problem is for at least a YEAR and have been very close to thinking I was going NUTS.

If you happen to have 29.1 around and care to replicate again, can you report if `c-x 5 c` spawns a new frame that works?

@BryanBennett i'm on the road for a couple days, but will do so as soon as i get back to a spare computer. so that i'm clear, get it to lock up, and then type `c-x 5 c` and see if i get a new, working frame?

@toddsundsted: that is bound to `clone-frame`, and so should give you a new working frame that is exactly the same as the frozen one. It will be mutated in whatever way you'd modified the frozen one, if I am right (the UI is frozen, but input processing does work).

@BryanBennett awesome! okay, i'll give that a try!