Executable built with PyInstaller (PySide6 app) only runs on my development PC, not on other machines

[Stefanos0710]

Executable built with PyInstaller (PySide6 app) only runs on my development PC, not on other machines

Hi,
I’m building a PySide6 application into an executable using PyInstaller. The build works and the .exe runs correctly on my development machine, but when I try to run the same executable on other Windows PCs, it immediately exits with no visible error.

My project repository (build scripts are in /app/builds):
https://github.com/Stefanos0710/SignAI

Environment

• Windows 11
• Python 3.10
• PyInstaller 6.17.0

Behavior on other PCs

• No window appears
• the app appears in Task Manager only as a background process

If anyone has advice or sees what might be wrong, I would appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance!

[rokm]

it immediately exits with no visible error.

No window appears
the app appears in Task Manager only as a background process

So what is actually happening? Does the application crash (= "exit immediately") or does it run but does not show a window?

You could try building without --windowed and run the executable from command prompt; this way, you will see if any (non-fatal) warnings are printed to stdout/stderr.

[Stefanos0710]

So, if I run the executable on the same computer where it was built, it works completely normally. But when I run it on another Windows PC, no window appears, but the process only shows up in Task Manager under Background processes.

[rokm]

Then you could have an exception in a secondary thread, or in a Qt callback; those usually don't terminate the application, and may sometimes stop the program flow, at least in my experience.

Like I said, try to enable console (remove --windowed flag from your build script) and see what output you get in the console.