Fix OpenClaw macOS: Gateway Won't Stay Running / Telegram Bot Silent

Two macOS problems share a root cause: the OpenClaw gateway that dies the moment you close Terminal, and the Telegram bot that goes silent. The gateway needs to run as a persistent launchd service, and the channel needs a gateway it can actually reach. The fix for the first is openclaw gateway install; the rest of this page covers Telegram and the macOS permissions that trip people up.

The gateway dies when you close the terminal

A gateway you start with openclaw gateway start in a Terminal window is a child process of that shell. Close the window, log out, or let the Mac sleep, and the process is torn down with it. That’s why your agent works while the terminal is open and goes dead the moment you close it.

The fix is to register the gateway as a persistent launchd service so macOS keeps it alive:

# Register the gateway as a launchd service
openclaw gateway install

# Confirm it's running independently of any terminal
openclaw gateway status

Once installed, launchd starts the gateway at login and restarts it if it crashes. You should see a healthy daemon in openclaw gateway status without having started it from a shell. Close every terminal and re-check, it stays up.

The Telegram bot stops responding

If the gateway is up but your Telegram bot is silent, work through these in order:

# 1. Is the channel connected at all?
openclaw channels status

# 2. Probe connectivity end to end
openclaw channels status --probe

• Gateway not actually running. If you never installed the launchd service (above), the gateway may be down. A dead gateway means a dead bot. Fix the gateway first.
• BotFather token wrong or stale. Re-check the API token you got from BotFather and that it’s the one OpenClaw has configured. A rotated token silently breaks the bot.
• Binding to loopback. This is the subtle one. If gateway.bind is set to loopback only, the gateway can’t be reached by the traffic your channel depends on. Check it:

openclaw config get gateway.bind
openclaw config get gateway.mode

If a channel needs to reach the gateway from outside loopback, bind it to the LAN interface and restart (openclaw gateway restart).

macOS permissions OpenClaw needs

Even with a healthy gateway, macOS will silently block some tools until you grant permissions. In System Settings > Privacy & Security, grant OpenClaw (and your terminal, if you run it there):

• Full Disk Access — file tools that read/write outside the sandbox.
• Accessibility — controlling other apps and windows.
• Screen Recording — any screen-reading / screenshot tool.

Missing permissions look like “the tool ran but nothing happened,” which is easy to mistake for a bug. Grant all three, then restart the gateway.

Quick reference

Related OpenClaw guides

• Back to the full OpenClaw troubleshooting hub for all errors.
• Auth failing on connect? See gateway token missing / 1008 unauthorized.
• Gateway never becomes healthy on its port? See timed out waiting for gateway port 18709.
• Bot connects but replies are empty? See blank or empty responses.

Need help?

If the gateway still won’t stay up or the bot won’t answer after this, we offer a fixed-scope remote rescue session. See OpenClaw troubleshooting help →