Arc (chromium) Browser: Cannot open "Options" or "Tips" pages

[boyeatssteak]

This looks to be similar to issue #39 , but in a different browser. I'm using Arc Browser 1.33.0 on MacOS 14.4

The rest of the extension works fine, and I know at some point in the past, the "Options" page opened properly, even in Arc.

Recently though, when clicking Options or Tips from the footer, the click appears to be ignored in all contexts.

In normal Chrome v119.0.6045.199 on the same machine, the extension works exactly as expected without any issues.

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Trying to follow the advise in the other issue, I cloned this repo, npm install and npm run build, and then "Load unpacked" the extension directly in to Arc, but I still don't know how to get to any console output specific to the extension (v1.9.5).

If you can advise me on how to collect logs or console output for you, I'm happy to do so.

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Other minor differences from #39 :

the popup freezes in the sense that I can no longer click any of the other links

This is not my experience.

found a workaround by opening and closing the extension window twice, which then allowed options tab to display.

This also, is not my experience. I cannot get the Options page to display in Arc in any scenario.

[Fannon]

Hi!

Thanks for going through the effort to reproduce it!

Now that you loaded it unpacked, you're already most of the way. Regarding how you get to the console, this may be different across browser. For chrome, you right-click the extension icon and choose "inspect pop up window". I remember that one browser had the option to switch the console focus to the popup somewhere in the developer console itself. If you find out how it works in your case (I don't have a mac nor the Arc browser), it would be interesting to learn how this is done.

[boyeatssteak]

Thanks @Fannon ! It was right where you said in the right-click menu, I don't know why I didn't think to check there 🤦 .

There are no errors reporting in the chrome://extensions page, or the console. Here is what I was able to determine though:

• in the npm run test instance of the popup, this bug does not present, only in the built and installed extension
• from window.location I can see that I never leave the index.html page, even though I click 'OPTIONS' and 'TIPS'.
• if I add target="_blank" to the anchor element, it opens the options page in a brand new non-extension page, so for kicks I tried adding target="_self", but it had no effect
• if I change the default_popup in the manifest to be the options page, I correctly land on Options on opening the extension, and then I am 'stuck' there, and cannot nav to the index page (verified by window.location again)

Based on all of that, I suspect it is more likely a bug with the currently-in-use Chrome engine Arc is using, and not a bug with the extension itself.

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Workaround

A clunky workaround though is to go to just nav directly to the options page in the main browser without bothering to try to access it via the extension itself.

1. Go to chrome://extensions to find the ID of your install
2. Go to chrome-extension://{{ id }}/popup/options.html to adjust your options

In my tests, this correctly displays, allows me to edit, and persists my saved changes. 🤷

I'm going to close this since I don't suspect there is anything further worth you investigating, but feel free to open it back up, or let me know if I can help gather any additional information!

[Fannon]

Ok, thanks for finding this out! Sounds definitely like a problem with the Arc browser itself.

It's also good that you documented how to directly access the options in case that something goes wrong. Well done!