Page Refresh required in Chrome after extended non-use

Same here. I use Chrome. I have just gotten used to refreshing the page every time I need to do something.

Can you share more details on how I can consistently reproduce this with Chrome?

I load my dashboard into chrome on my PC. I use it all the time. I have noticed that if I don’t use it for a while (guessing about an hour) the tiles stop updating when the action completes (e.g., click on light tile to turn on light, but the tile does not update). If I refresh the window it works once again. I made a video of it if you want to see it:
chrome_bP4aSptthb.gif

Admin Edit: converted gif to mp4 and included below

Thanks for sharing the additional details.

That’s different that what Nigel described on his fridge (Family Hub), so I hope you don’t mind that I’m moving this to its own thread. In Nigel’s case, after the device goes into screensaver mode, when the device later wakes from screensaver, the device status updates from while the screensaver was on aren’t reflected, but any new actions / status updates are reflected as expected. That seems to be unique to the Samsung browser on the fridge.


In your GIF, I don’t see the spinner in the bottom-left corner of the tile reflecting the attempt to send the command.

It would be interesting to open Chrome’s developer tools and watch the console logs while you attempt the commands after waking from sleep and experiencing the issue.

It might also help to see the same Diagnostics I requested from Nigel, but it’s hard to tell based on the information provided so far.

Can you think of anything else that’s special about that period of time? Just the browser running in the background? No screensaver activation or certain actions that seem to correlate with the issue occurring or anything? Any extensions installed or special customizations to Chrome (eg. flag tweaks)?

I use Chrome as my primary browser on all my devices and I’ve never come across this, so I’m wondering if there might be something else that’s unique about our configurations or how we use our devices (Windows 11 Desktop, Mac Studio, Macbook Air, Pixel 7, etc)

And if you figure out steps to intentionally trigger the issue, that would be the most helpful. If I can reproduce it, it’s much more likely I can figure out what’s going on.

No extensions in Chrome. I do have screensave enabled (screen goes blank and PC locks).
I left it overnight and tried again this morning - same thing.
I opened developer tools and see some error about a ‘key’. Any idea what this is about?

When I refresh the page, I see this. Not sure if this helps but here it is:

Error after Overnight

It’s hard to tell since it’s all compiled javascript with really short names, but it looks like something with the rendering process is getting tripped up.

Are you saying that you see that error message show up as soon as you click on the tile after the device was asleep? Or that you woke your computer and just immediately opened the console and saw that message before attempting any action?

Timestamps

If your tests will be over an extended period of time, it might help to enable the timestamps in the console logs as sometimes that provides a bit of context that can be helpful.

You can enable it under the ‘Console’ section of the Chrome Dev Tools settings.

After Refresh

Thanks for sharing. Nothing particularly concerning about that. Help Scout and the Beacon are related to our support and knowledge base platform. It’s how we expose the support bubble with the send message and knowledge base features directly in the app, but it’s all isolated and sandboxed so it shouldn’t contribute to these type of issues.

Screensaver vs Not

In this particular example, you mentioned that the device was left overnight so the screen would have gone blank and locked. Does the device otherwise stay fully powered on? In other words, does the power state change to standby/sleep which is common on Windows machines?

And in your earlier reply, you mentioned:

In that example, I interpreted it to mean that you were experiencing during the day while you were actively using your PC, but might have had the dashboard in the background… and it was occurring after 1+ hour of not using the dashboard and then returning to it and trying an action. Is that right?

Again, a big piece of this for me is trying to find the exact steps to reproduce it. Adding an hour wait in can be really challenging, but if we have specific steps that involve that, at least it gets us pointed in the right direction. :slight_smile:

Are you saying that you see that error message show up as soon as you click on the tile after the device was asleep? Or that you woke your computer and just immediately opened the console and saw that message before attempting any action?

My PC never sleeps. I unlock my PC, go to the page (always open) with Sharptools and click on a light. The lamp goes on/off, but the icon does not change. I open dev tools and see that error about the ‘key’.

Does the device otherwise stay fully powered on? In other words, does the power state change to standby/sleep which is common on Windows machines?

Again, my PC never sleeps:

image

In that example, I interpreted it to mean that you were experiencing during the day while you were actively using your PC, but might have had the dashboard in the background… and it was occurring after 1+ hour of not using the dashboard and then returning to it and trying an action. Is that right?

I tested this all day today, trying to get it to ‘fail’. Only after leaving my PC alone for several hours was I able to get it to fail. We left to go out for dinner and when I got home I unlocked my PC clicked on the Chrome task on the taskbar (again, always loaded) clicked on the tab with Sharptools loaded and clicked on a light at 22:35:15. The issue occurred. Log: sharptools.io-1718246359127.log

Thanks for the additional details and the logs.

If you click on that device tile again do you see the error about the key again? Note that Chrome collapses the ‘same’ messages together, so you may just see a small counter in the error increasing as you click?

And same question for if you click other device tiles? For example, in your initial GIF, it looked like you tried both Master Bedroom lamps one after another.

I had mentioned it before, but just wanted to visually point out what I was talking about from your GIF with not seeing the spinner in the bottom left when the action was being requested (while things were broken).

That plus the error message appearing to be a low-level rendering issue coming from the frontend library makes this particularly interesting.

I didn’t see anything overly complex in your dashboard based on the screenshot and I use Chrome in a very similar manner to you on my PC and have never experienced this, so there must be something unique, but I can’t think what it might be.

One other question - I’m curious if you are still able to navigate from dashboard to dashboard within the web app when the issue occurs. And if you were to navigate to a different dashboard and then back if the issue still exists.

I noticed you are in kiosk mode, so you might need to temporarily add a dashboard tile to the dashboard or temporarily run the dashboard without kiosk mode.

I noticed you are in kiosk mode, so you might need to temporarily add a dashboard tile to the dashboard or temporarily run the dashboard without kiosk mode.

How do I run without kiosk mode? I don’t recall doing configuring to do so. I do have the dashboard running on another device in kiosk mode, but not my PC (that I know of).

I didn’t see the top-navigation until after you showed the page reload and then the tiles immediately filled to the top of the screen, so I figured you were using the kiosk mode with ?kiosk=true in the URL.

It was really hard to tell with it being a GIF as there aren’t playback controls, it’s a relatively low framerate, and it was pretty cropped in… so perhaps it was just how the recording looked.

Regardless, the main idea was navigating in-app between dashboards to see if that was even possible when the error was occuring and to see if that resolved the rendering issue (eg. not using the URL bar as that reloads the web app).

If you download the gif and play in a browser it won’t be cropped.

I think I figured out what it is. It didn’t matter if it is overnight or just a long time during the day. As long as the page sat for several hours the issue occurred, but only if you click on a tile before doing anything else (like open dev tools). After adding an exclusion for sharptools.io to the memory saver setting in Chrome the issue has not occurred (Settings - Performance - Memory Saver):

6/16/24 Edit: I spoke too soon. Still same issue. Happened yesterday after being gone for 8 hours and this morning.

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To answer your question: I can’t navigate the site at all until I refresh (e.g., rules, another dashboard).

I’m going to try Edge and see if I see the same behavior. If not, I will just switch to using Edge on my PC for the dashboard.

Just a heads up that Microsoft Edge uses the same rendering engine under the hood. Microsoft switched to using Chromium to power Microsoft Edge in early 2020.

Can you share more details about this? Did you mean that you can workaround the issue by opening Chrome’s Dev Tools before clicking a tile and in that case things work as expected?

Can you think of anything else unique about your setup?

I leave SharpTools open on my desktop all the time and I’ve never run into this. And I don’t have other reports of it, so I suspect there must be something unique about the configuration that I just haven’t thought to ask about yet. I originally thought there was something special about your

My bad. I opened the link and figured the preview was the same as the real GIF. :blush:

In reviewing the full GIF, I still don’t see anything particularly unique that screams out to me. If you’re willing to test a few things, I have a few ideas. Can you make a copy of the dashboard and edit the copy with the following tweaks:

  1. Remove the Custom Tile with the clock in the top-right
  2. Use the default theme (No Theme applied)

Then use that as your primary dashboard for a bit to see if the issue still occurs?

I also noticed that it was using a Chrome Pinned Tab (small tab with just the icon). I can’t think of any reason why that might contribute to the issue, but trying to use a regular tab would at least rule that out as a potential contributor.

After using Edge I find a very similar behavior: The tiles fuinction, but they don’t update or show any action until I refresh the page. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to spend on troubleshooting this at this time. If and when I have time to spend on this I will try your suggestion:

If you’re willing to test a few things, I have a few ideas. Can you make a copy of the dashboard and edit the copy with the following tweaks:

  1. Remove the Custom Tile with the clock in the top-right
  2. Use the default theme (No Theme applied)

Then use that as your primary dashboard for a bit to see if the issue still occurs?

I also noticed that it was using a Chrome Pinned Tab (small tab with just the icon). I can’t think of any reason why that might contribute to the issue, but trying to use a regular tab would at least rule that out as a potential contributor.