I keep receiving this notification on my dashboard. What is this and what can I do to solve it?
Update: We rolled back the release that included the background worker.
You should be able to refresh the page in your browser to pull in the rolled back version. If you continue to see either message, you may need to clear the cache/data in your browser to force it to pull in the rolled back version.
More details are available in my post further down in the thread
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Can you share more details about when you’re seeing that message? What type of device and browser is it on? I’ve had one other report of this on iOS when the ‘Add to Homescreen’ feature is used.
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TLDR: The message won’t functionally impact anything as it’s just a background feature right now.
We are in the process of some pretty significant architecture enhancements for the platform. We’re changing how the realtime updates work and the first step of that is piloting a realtime connection in a ‘background worker’. We had been running this in beta for the past several weeks without issue, so we released it to production on Monday.
This will ultimately be used to push the realtime updates to your dashboards though, so I’d love to track down what’s going on.
There’s two basic error messages that could show up. The ‘Background worker disconnected’ message shouldn’t show up as it relies on a pretty fundamental feature of the browser, but as noted above, another user mentioned they are seeing it on iOS with ‘Add to Homescreen’, so I suspect there’s a weird quirk with that combination. We’re looking into that.
Background worker disconnected [RELOAD]
The second message that could show up is ‘Socket disconnected’ and you would expect to see this message if you didn’t have a solid network connection or perhaps if you were transitioning between networks (eg. Wi-Fi to cellular). That message would automatically clear once the network connection was reestablished and the socket was able to reconnect.
Socket disconnected
I’m also getting this (Background worker disconnected) on an iPad any time the iPad screen locks, and the iPad subsequently is unlocked. Happens whether I am using the “add to home” method or just vanilla Safari. I do have several media tiles that are pointed to HTTPS mjpg streams that are visibly timed out and not refreshing, along with this (despite having the option set to refresh them).
Edit: pressing the reload button that shows up next to it refreshes everything, if this pop-up notification simply just automatically refreshed everything without presenting the pop up to the user, that would seem to avoid the problem entirely?
Can you share more details?
I just tried on iPadOS 17.2 on a 9th generation iPad. If I open SharpTools in Safari, hit the power button, then hit the power again and unlock, I don’t see the message.
That would be great if there’s a consistent way to reproduce this. Is there a step I missed? Or is some amount of waiting before powering back on required?
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I noticed the message come up once while I was collecting the OS details for my reply above. The screen autolocked after a timeout while I was on the iPad settings screen, then when I unlocked and switched back to Safari, I briefly saw the ‘Background worker disconnected’ message, then it resolved itself after a 2-3 seconds.
If you wait a few seconds, does the message go away?
If I wait - the message does go away, but the MJPG media tiles never refresh on their own after that. If I press the refresh button before the pop-up disappears, the media tiles all refresh.
I just got the iPad, it’s also a 9th gen. I haven’t updated it yet, it’s still on 16.6. Initially, I was a little bit hesitant about upgrading it to iOS 17 with the somewhat low RAM in this model, but I think maybe I am being overly cautious.
There is an update available to 16.7.2 and also 17.1.1 (not sure if 17.2 would then be an option once upgraded to 17.1.1).
I’m thinking about maybe first upgrading to 16.7.2, seeing if the issue is still there - if so, then upgrading to 17.1.1.
You think that is a good plan?
Also, when I say the MJPG streams are not refreshing - this is specifically what I’m talking about:
And yes, it does seem to mostly happen after the iPad locks as a result of the idle auto-lock feature. Manually locking and unlocking does not cause the error.
I suspect that the underlying reason is probably the same with both of them – I suspect it’s something iOS / Safari is doing to stop the processing when Safari is ‘backgrounded’.
I don’t think updating your OS version will solve it. Let’s move the MJPEG discussion to its own thread as while the underlying iOS / Safari action that is triggering it is likely the same as the ‘Background worker disconnected’ message, it’s a different issue.
Can you share some more details? What make/model device is it? What browser are you running?
It looks like that’s running in ‘Add to Homescreen’ right? Does it also occur directly in a normal browser?
Samsung S22+
Samsung Internet Browser
Not sure what that is… Is that the shortcut for the dashboard? If so Yes.
My Dashboard is always on on a Windows PC that sleeps on a regular basis. I’ve not seen it there.
UPDATE:
My wife has the same phone. She saw the same message as well as the socket message this morning. She was leaving through the garage. She could not get the garage doors (either of them) to open with her phone dashboard. She had to use the wall switch. I suspect she pressed many times. About 5 minutes after she left, the garage doors went crazy. Opening partially, closing partially, opening fully, etc. This happened for about 2 minutes. Is it storing her presses and triggering after those messages go away?
She most likely would be transitioning from WIFI to cellular in the driveway.
No. It doesn’t store the commands. It sends the request and it either succeeds, fails, or times out. It should have timed out well before the 5 minutes though, so that timing is a bit odd.
If it happens again and you want me to look into it, send a note to support@sharptools.io with the relevant device ID and approximate time and time zone.
Just an update that we rolled back the front end change that includes the background worker and socket connection.
If any of you are part of the beta program or would like to join, I would love your help in figuring out how to reproduce this consistently. 
I’m in the Beta. I’ll keep an eye out and activly try to reproduce.
I did’t think so, but I can see her in my minds eye pushing like a mad woman…
The 5 minutes might be key as we have a poor cell signal from the driveway to about 5 minutes away. I was thinking that maybe when she actually drove into better coverage it started triggering her madness!!! LOL
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I’m also getting these messages many times per day on my Fire tablets. They hang there for sometimes and hour and they obscure content. I use Fully Kiosk browser.
Sorry, I’ve been away most of the day. This is occurring on a Fire tablet running fully kiosk. I noticed this morning and it has reoccurred 3 more times.
Which messages? If you were getting only the socket disconnect message, that points to potential instability with the network connection. If you’re seeing the ‘Background worker disconnected’ message, that would be interesting as I’m not seeing that on any of the Fire Tablets with Fully Kiosk I’ve tested with. It would be helpful to get some additional hardware/version details. (Fully Kiosk → Settings → Other Settings → Device Info)
Same question on details. I’m also curious what kind of settings you have in place for Fully Kiosk. Is it set to lock the screen or some other idle / screensaver type of approach?
Just to reiterate that we rolled this change back earlier today, so you should be able to refresh the page in your browser to pull in the rolledback version. (Try ‘Go to Start URL’ in Fully Kiosk or clear the cache in Fully if it’s holding onto the new version and you don’t have the navigation bar or pull-to-refresh enabled)
I’m seeing both messages.
I’m also having problems with the fully kiosk wake on camera and wake on microphone that started about the same time. Have not been able to prove a connection.
Additionally I don’t think I have network issues. My network is stable and there is strong wifi at both devices.