Postman Latest Version 12x Fails to Reopen After Closing on Windows 11

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1

Environment:

  • OS: Windows 11

  • Antivirus: Trend Micro

  • Postman Version Affected: Latest available version before downgrade

  • Working Stable Version: v11.83.2

Issue Description:
Postman installs and launches successfully initially. However, after closing the application, it no longer reopens normally.

Observed behavior:

  • Clicking the Postman shortcut does nothing visually.

  • Postman.exe remains visible in Task Manager.

  • Memory usage is present, indicating the process is running.

  • No application window appears.

  • Reinstalling Postman temporarily resolves the issue only until the application is closed again.

  • Deleting the %AppData%\Roaming\Postman folder also temporarily restores functionality.

Technical Findings:

  • The issue appears related to corrupted renderer/session state or Electron runtime rendering failure.

  • Running Postman with a fresh user profile using:
    "Postman.exe" --user-data-dir="%temp%\postman-clean"
    successfully launches the application.

  • This indicates the application binary is functional, but the default user profile becomes corrupted after closing.

  • GPU rendering and renderer cache corruption may be involved.

  • The process consistently remains active in Task Manager even when the UI fails to appear.

Troubleshooting Performed:

  • Reinstalled latest Postman version

  • Cleared %AppData% and %LocalAppData% Postman directories

  • Disabled GPU rendering using launch flags

  • Cleared cache/session storage folders

  • Ran Postman in compatibility mode

  • Tested with clean user-data profile

  • Verified issue reproduction multiple times

Resolution / Workaround:
Downgrading to Postman v11.83.2 completely resolved the issue.
The downgraded version:

  • opens correctly

  • closes correctly

  • reopens normally without profile corruption

Possible Root Cause:
Potential regression in newer Electron/Postman runtime builds affecting:

  • renderer initialization

  • persisted session/window state

  • GPU rendering

  • local IndexedDB/session storage handling

Requested Investigation:
Please investigate compatibility/regression issues introduced in newer Postman desktop builds affecting Windows 11 systems where Postman cannot reopen after closure while the process remains active in the background.

2

I’ve been dealing with the same issue on Windows 11.
Same remediation every day, I need to open Postman.
Thanks for the Muhday hint about the prior version. I will be downgrading. Hope this issue gets resolved in the future version. Especially since reinstallation wipes out all my variable data in environments. A real hassle.
Hopefully, Postman doesn’t see my older version and doesn’t auto-update, bringing this issue back.

3

Same problem here with Win11 and Postman 12. Only workaround is clean %appData%/Postman (I have tried to clean partially but didn’t find which file or folder cause the issue).

4

We encountered a similar issue where Postman does not launch after the 12.x update. It continues running in Task Manager but never opens until the roaming files are deleted. When is this expected to be fixed?

5

I have the same issue. Tried to switch to Postman Web with the Desktop Agent instead, but even that didn’t work. It said “Local network access unavailable” even after providing the access.

Where can I download v11.83.2?

Edit: Found it (https://dl.pstmn.io/download/version/11.83.2/win64)

6

Hey folks,

There are a couple of discussions already going on around similar/the same issues here on our Github Issue Tracker:

Trying to bring everything into a single or centralised place so it’s not spread across multiple Discourse topics.