Error 400 on Google sites (YouTube, Maps, Search etc)

[H0R1Z0N]

I am a big youtube content consumer, when i wakeup, i put all my interesting new video from subscription into a new tabs, recently, it have a certain limit before error 400 block my access to youtube because of this plugin, so i am sure there might be some chance your code was altered.

Temporary fix i used was flushing last hour history and stuff (work a little more time) and when i cannot do it anymore, i flush all the cookie from youtube.

It's becoming annoying a lot and i am trying to clear my tab in case you don't fix it soon so i could disable the extension for a while.

The chrome store support page of this extension seem to indicate i am not alone with this problem.

[mike-athene]

Looks like this is related to how TGS stores scroll position in the cookie(i.e. it shares the same one as the current domain), if you have too many open but suspended tabs, eventually the size of cookie will reach a limit and users start to get 400.

Any other way to store the scroll position? Maybe local storage?

[H0R1Z0N]

It started happening after the breach or the update after that one, i have around 100-500 tabs open, mostly all suspended with 80% being youtube tabs.

[H0R1Z0N]

What's the dev doing, i might has well start to compile a previous version and upload it instead....

[bxkx]

I wonder if this will ever see a fix...

and I don't have 100+ tabs open, just ~6 YT tabs and yet it's happening. I guess I'll need to search for another suspend extension soon. :/

[deanoemcke]

Hi. Sorry for the delay on this. I can confirm that it is indeed an issue caused by how the scroll position is recorded in the cookie (exactly as @mike-athene described). The cookie will get cleared on a browser restart, unless you have the 'continue where i left off' setting checked in chrome. The workaround for now (in the case of youtube) is to go to chrome://settings/content/cookies and type www.youtube.com in the 'search cookies' box, and then click on the trashcan to delete. It would be nice to get some idea of how badly this is affecting average users. Are their any other sites that have similar issues? I will work on a fix asap. I'm not sure just yet when that will find it's way into the chrome webstore. That depends on a few other changes that will be bundled into the same release.

[jaug1337]

Oh and here I was thinking I was getting crazy.

[m4gnify]

I'm having this problem too.

[brennebeck]

@deanoemcke

The workaround for now (in the case of youtube) is to go to chrome://settings/content/cookies and type www.youtube.com in the 'search cookies' box, and then click on the trashcan to delete.

Can confirm this works.

It would be nice to get some idea of how badly this is affecting average users. Are their any other sites that have similar issues?

I've only had the issue with youtube. No other sites have given me errors like this and I frequently have ~250 sites open, most of which are suspended (then I use vimium tab search to switch to them and return). However, youtube is a very common site so I would speculate it could have a pretty big affect on the userbase.

[u1735067]

For reference, to clean those cookies, I use Awesome Cookie Manager, then go to chrome-extension://hcpidejphgpcgfnpiehkcckkkemgneif/popup.html and search for Name=gsScrollPos-, then Select all -> Delete. This way it'll clean for all websites.

@deanoemcke : maybe I missed the information, but without auto-update, how to know if there's an update ? By checking the release date ?

[fzimmermann89]

Can you release a bugfix to the chrome store? This issue is kind of a show stopper right now

[DougWeller]

It also happens with Google Books, which is pretty bad as then I don't know what I was looking at. Doug

[H0R1Z0N]

It's still fixed, why after more than a week the update has not been push to webstore already ? Do google manually check the source code or the dev's planning to self destroy his own work.

On Fri, Aug 4, 2017 at 12:09 PM, DougWeller notifications@github.com wrote:

It also happens with Google Books, which is pretty bad as then I don't know what I was looking at. Doug

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/deanoemcke/thegreatsuspender/issues/537#issuecomment-320288705, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFphh8RmA2wA3rHE66e4NRU2_7PHYmd6ks5sU0I_gaJpZM4N7oaM .

[soybomber]

been dealing with this issues since the whole hacker debacle more or less. i generally have a couple hundred or more tabs open, and a lot of them are youtubes. i am constantly in the habit of making multiple youtube playlists, and having to delete cookies and resign in to every damn website i use after words is more than a little frustrating :( hoping for a fix soon!

[deanoemcke]

The fix is tied up in a dev branch along with a lot of other new code. I'm tying it all up now and want to give the whole release a thorough test before putting in on the chrome webstore. I'm really sorry for the delay everyone.

[PMH232]

The fix is tied up in a dev branch along with a lot of other new code.

Best I remember, that's a big no-no.

Fix the bug, then write new code. (unless, of course, the fix necessitates new code) (but don't cheat!)

[afedulov]

I really like your plugin, it is a life saver for such an obsessive multi-tasking tab opener as me. For that - many thanks! BUT I also really like when I do not need to delete all google and youtube cookies every half a day. Is there any chance you could pull a feature branch and just hotfix it on the master? This issue is VERY annoying.

[Inverness]

I'm glad you're fixing this @deanoemcke. Please practice better version management in the future though.

This scenario is precisely the reason that patch/bug fix releases have separate versioning in the typical major.minor.patch version scheme. If the released version is 1.0.0 then you should always be able to release a 1.0.1 version to fix bugs in 1.0.0 while simultaneously continuing new feature development for 1.1.0.

[deanoemcke]

😞

that is not actually the whole story however. you may or may not be aware of the current extraordinarily painful process receiving an automatic update of this extension can be: https://github.com/deanoemcke/thegreatsuspender/issues/526

well the good news is that there was an obvious way to solve this the whole time, but it is going to take 2 new releases before it takes effect (ie. it only kicks in once you have the next new version already installed, and are about to receive the subsequent new version).

so i have been very reluctant to push ANY new version that did not have this new update handling feature. unfortunately, and there is no apologising for this, a lot of other new features ended up creeping into this release at the same time.

@afedulov a temporary hotfix on master IS an option, but i would not want to force the update on anyone automatically. so it would require manual installation. AFAIAA, the only way to update to said version would be to uninstall the extension and reinstall it. this means losing your settings, whitelist, and session history. and the only people that would be doing this are the few of you on this thread.

it's probably not a crazy amount of work to do, so if you really insist i'll do my best.

and once again, big apologies for not handling this in the best manner. semantic version control wasn't even part of my vocabulary when i started this extension - which explains why it's v6.30 :(

[DAOWAce]

So it is caused by this extension, huh..

2nd time it's happened to me; hoping that update's out soon.. with a way to preserve our data!

Edit: Clearing cookies is alright, but we lose things stored in them, which for youtube I think contains our watched/resume history. For someone like me, that's really important, so if the cookies do contain the data, we're forced to manually delete the problematic sections of the cookies rather than wipe them entirely.

[ziobbe]

This awesome addon is my way to arginate the weight of internet content on my browser, I have to use an average number of tabs and id' like to return to use it in yt too.

This is in response to:

It would be nice to get some idea of how badly this is affecting average users. Are their any other sites that have similar issues?

[H0R1Z0N]

Yeah, it also affect store.playstation.com (PSN store from Sony) after 70 cookie, it would take while before it happen. Youtube's affected at 40 cookie and use at less 10 cookie from account login.

[ghost]

I have that problem as well. Why is it not getting fixed? It's extremely annoying.

[Froyok]

I have this problem too for the past few weeks now. It took me a while to figure out the problem was from this Chrome extension. In my case I have a quick workaround (using EditThisCookie extension to ban the first Youtube gScrollPos cookies found). Still, I would like to see the fix released soon, especially if it requires two updates like mentioned above.

[volt55]

@deanoemcke

I am also getting error 400 on youtube pages. I am also using incognito mode in Chrome Browser.

Do I have to restart the Chrome Browser for changes to YouTube to take effect?

If I delete the cookies or cache, will I have to restart for the changes to take effect or will the Youtube pages start working immediately without having to restart the browser?

Do I delete the cookies or the cache?

Please get back to me as soon as you can.

[deanoemcke]

@volt55 The workaround for now (in the case of youtube) is to go to chrome://settings/content/cookies and type www.youtube.com in the 'search cookies' box, and then click on the trashcan to delete. you will not need to restart the browser for this to work. alternatively, a browser restart will also fix it (without having to manually delete the cookies)

[epixcz]

I'm kinda sad it's not fixed yet, was'nt event sure it was because of this extension. I was just clearing cookies on Youtube from time to time. And FIY there is also problem when you try to use 'Search Google for image' by right-clicking on image. Clearing Google cookies helps.

[Optiri]

I'm seeing this issue on other google sites as well now. When I goto gmail.com it redirects to https://www.google.com/gmail/ and the 400 error appears as well as https://www.google.com/drive. Strangely going to youtube.com doesn't give me an error.

[reijin90]

I think this happens on all google services if you wait long enough. Maps, mail, youtube, docs...

[gnzlbg]

Yep, I need to use incognito mode to use maps, youtube, etc...

[epixcz]

@gnzlbg Cleaning all google related cookies is much better than be forced to use incognito.

[ernani]

Going to -> chrome://settings/cookies/detail?site=www.youtube.com and deleting all cookies prefixed with gScrollPos- did it, also, why can't it use localStorage other than cookies? This seems to be affecting the youtube/google maximum header size and therefore causing this error. It seems to happen when the amount of cookies grow too big.

[DAOWAce]

Just happened to me yet again this morning and I was forced to do a manual clearing of all the gsScrollPos cookies again, of which there were around 40 different ones.

It's effectively happening to me about once a month.

Upon looking at my cookies with that extension mentioned above, I see there's numerous "gsScrollPos" entries for various sites which I don't have suspended, and even haven't visited in weeks. Are they all from the addon? I'll probably just delete all of them. Why they haven't been deleted upon session end, as they state, is beyond me.

I think it's time I switch to the dev version with this fix, especially seeing as it's been untouched for a month now.

As per my original comment edit: Clearing cookies is alright, but we lose things stored in them (ie; login session), which for youtube I think contains our visited/watched/resume history (can someone confirm?). For people like me, that's really important, so if the cookies do contain the data, we're forced to manually delete the problematic sections of the cookies rather than wipe them entirely.

[Lagittaja]

Happens to me too.

As for the workaround, here's a better alternative in my opinion: install EditThisCookie (or similar addon) In youtube you lock these cookies with the padlock: APISID, HSID, LOGIN_INFO, PREF, SAPISID, SID, SSID. If you use the theater mode then also lock wide.

Now, next time you encounter the error 400, wipe YT's cookies using the trashcan on EditThisCookie. The cookies you locked will be preserved but everything else will be purged.

I'm not 100% sure if all of those cookies need to be locked.. I tested it and if you wipe ALL the cookies and then visit YT "for the first time", there are 4 generic cookies. Make note of them and then login, set your languages, autoplay, theater mode or whatever and look at the cookies again. These were the cookies that were added after I did all that. Not sure what most of them do but at least everything is working honky dory now. No issues so far.

Edit: Then there's of course the option to block the dang gsScrollPos cookies if you want. I don't know how it would affect things but you can do it.

[Herst]

You can also access cookies for a domain by clicking on the left side of the URL bar (between URL and the button bar).

[jpluimers]

This still happens on the Dutch Google Maps and YouTube. For YouTube, you have to clean the YouTube gsScrollPos cookies, but it's different from maps as I posted in https://plus.google.com/+JeroenPluimers/posts/GtqDLZbSAUz :

When +Google Nederland maps only fills none or part of the map tiles at https://maps.google.nl, but https://maps.google.com works fine, then remove any gsScrollPos cookies from www.google.nl.

I need to do this every couple of days to keep maps.google.nl working.

[afedulov]

Is this getting fixed?

[fzimmermann89]

It is already fixed, deanoemcke has to publish new version (there seem to be some issues regarding auto-updates that need to be fixed, so it will take some time)

A workaround is compiling the extension from source and using it in developer mode., but you will loose all your settings and saved tabs

tgs-7.3.0.zip -unpack the zip file, -open the extension setting -remove thegreatsuspender -check developer mode -use "load unpacked extension" to install the new version by selecting the directory you unpacked the zip to

You will get a notification on each startup of chrome about an unsigned extension

[adotland]

interesting this bug just affected me today... dev hasn't updated since ext broke, guess he didn't get enough donations...

[owenblacker]

This has been affecting me for weeks on Google image requests (fixed now I removed 83 gsScrollPos cookies from Google) and started affecting me with Twitter last night (fixed now I removed 68 gsScrollPos cookies). It's pretty disappointed to see that there's still not been a fix pushed out to all of us after 4 months.

[AaronClover]

I've been having to reset the cache and cookies every other week or so due to this issue.

[Herst]

@AaronClover Just deleting the cookies for www.youtube.com is enough. You can access them by clicking on the left part of the URL bar.

[edsilmon]

for the problem with youtube, and as Herst says you need only delete the cookie folder for www.youtube.com as this folder stores only the scrollPos data (and one other file). All your youtube history and login details are stored in the youtube.com folder or elsewhere (note the lack of a www prefix for reasons unknown to me) and will be retained. The quickest way that works for me is >> click the area left of the site address, click cookies scroll down for www.youtube.com delete (remove) that entire folder.

[MiChAeLoKGB]

Hmm, so I never really had this issue with Youtube, that is probably because I have it white listed, but I have it with google search itself. The most annoying thing is, that you CAN NOT use some services from google, like reverse image search (this one is the most annoying) etc. even if the google search itself works. It just spews out an error about malformed request.

I figured out it was caused by cookies some time ago, just never really bothered to actually investigate what is causing it... Also, I do use Edit This Cookie, but the Awesome Cookie Manager is much easier and faster way to get rid of those cookies, so I am keeping that one till the fix is pushed do the web store.

[brennebeck]

Hi everyone,

I think we’ve established the easiest way to fix this. It’s pretty clear that editing the cookies, via the chrome settings page or an extension, is the easiest/quickest approach, though you can also build the extension yourself with the official* fix and then just install via dev mode. Why don’t we post a ‘canonical fix’ in a post here so users can just be directed to that until the fix is published?

@deanoemcke could you at least give some feedback on why the fix hasn’t been pushed?

*Edit due to autocorrect

[reasonabledoubt]

@deanoemcke could you at least give some feedback on why the fix hasn’t been pushed?

He explains up thread in this comment.

tl;dr: https://github.com/deanoemcke/thegreatsuspender/issues/526 is blocking.

[brennebeck]

@reasonabledoubt yup, saw that. Was hoping for additional info since his last update on either issue was a while back.

[pirate]

@deanoemcke is it feasible to add a settings option to disable gsScrollPos cookies entirely across the board? I don't need TGS to ever save my scroll position, and I'd rather not send unexpected cookies to sites (especially when I'm developing them and trying to debug cookies). Thanks!

[deanoemcke]

@pirate the new release will not involve cookies at all. it should never have been coded with cookies. i must have been eating magic cookies at the time :/ the issue really is just getting this new release out onto the web store. i'm trying my best, but don't want to push to all users until it has been thoroughly tested (due to upgrading pain points). there's not a day i don't think about this issue thread and resolving this. it is just that i have very limited time available.

[pirate]

@deanoemcke no worries, take your time! I totally understand as a fellow FOSS maintainer with very little free time outside my day job. We all really appreciate the amazing effort you've put into this extension, it's invaluable to (tens/hundreds of?) thousands of people.

[swoivey]

Just a +1 for experiencing this bug. Get a 400 error every few days and have to have a clear out of cookies, affects google maps too amongst others, so can't really just selectively delete. Appreciate your work, really do, it's a life saver, just the cons beginning to outweigh the pros so may have to delete soon. Hope you manage to push a new version soon. Will this auto-update?