Drive4ik
STG popup empty since Firefox 137, if using a shortcut and the STG icon is on the left side
Describe the bug Since Firefox 137, if I use a shortcut to open the STG popup, the popup window is completely blank (white).
This only happens in these circumstances:
- A keyboard shortcut is used to open the popup. A manual mouse click works fine.
- The STG icon is placed on the left side of the browser (left from the address bar). If it's on the right side, it works OK.
To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:
- Place the STG icon on the left side of the address bar (via Customize Toolbar).
- Set a shortcut in Extensions -> Manage extension shortcuts -> STG -> Open popup. I use
F2, but the bug seems to happen regardless of the chosen key/combo. - Press the shortcut to open STG popup.
- See an empty white popup.
Screenshots
STG popup after a shortcut press:
STG popup after a mouse click:
STG popup after a shortcut press, when it's on the right side:
Desktop (please complete the following information):
- OS and version: Fedora 42
- Firefox version: 137
- Simple Tab Groups version: 5.3.1
Additional context
Doesn't happen on Debian stable and STG 5.3. popup &shortcut works on either side
I can't reproduce that on Arch Linux either. It was working perfectly fine in everything I've tested.
@kparal Can you try to reproduce your problem in a fresh Firefox profile on the same machine?
I've tested this on a fairly vanilla Firefox profile that I usually only use to debug / test / develop add-ons, review add-on PRs etc.
I was using:
- Firefox stable 137.0 on Arch Linux 64-Bit
- STG 5.3.1
- created a few tab groups, admittedly mostly empty
- with toolbar button on the right of the URL bar
- used default keybinding F8 to open the popup
- with toolbar button on the left of the URL bar:
- used default keybinding F8 to open the popup
- I opened the Firefox sidebar and checked again
- I closed the Firefox sidebar and switched to vertical tab layout and checked again
- other add-ons: NoScript, uBlock Origin
I just noticed somewhat of a similar problem with Firefox 137 on Windows 11.
Looking at the Firefox changelog, I think they're are slowly rolling out changes to Firefox users to support/implement Firefox tab groups.
Here's a link to the Mozilla blog: https://mzl.la/4iQYJr3
I don't know if this is related to the problems we're experiencing, but I was having problems where my Simple Tab Groups extension would hang and I'd have to restart it. I thought it was something I was doing on my system because I was trying to configure the STG backups yesterday evening.
Same here on Ubuntu 24.04 (Fx 137 from mozilla's APT repo) except the popup goes blank only when starting interacting with its content. Works fIne if moved to the right side.
@chayashida I don't think this problem related to the Firefox native tab groups. Firefox native tab groups have been experimentally available since Firefox 136 already, which went into Nightly / Beta about 3 months ago already. There's been Some issues here on the GitHub for STG related to STG and native tab groups co-existing, but for the most part things at least didn't really break in STG when using native tab groups at the same time.
There's a bunch of functionality regarding the Firefox native tab groups that desperately need a webextensions API in order for extensions like STG to fully integrate with them.
I have a similar problem, I have 200+ tabs combined into 9 groups, and the popup is blank when it's on the left (no matter if I click it or use the shortcut), but when I move the popup button to the right, everything works fine. I am using Fedora Linux 40, Firefox 137, STG 5.3.1, lepton-proton theme and default arkenfox user.js.
@chayashida I don't think this problem related to the Firefox native tab groups. Firefox native tab groups have been experimentally available since Firefox 136 already, which went into Nightly / Beta about 3 months ago already. There's been Some issues here on the GitHub for STG related to STG and native tab groups co-existing, but for the most part things at least didn't really break in STG when using native tab groups at the same time.
I see. It broke around the time I was messing with symlinks to backup to a different folder. I got rid of the symlink, and saw my loading issue that sounded somewhat familiar to this issue. Is there anything that I could do to help troubleshoot? Or better for me to do it on my own since it's likely unrelated? (and not cloud the issue?)
@chayashida well, since you're one of the people experiencing the issue, it would be quite valuable if we could find a proper way of reproducing the problem in order to debug it properly.
So as mentioned in my https://github.com/Drive4ik/simple-tab-groups/issues/1282#issuecomment-2775510261 it would be interesting to see if you can reproduce the problem on a fresh Firefox profile with only STG installed.
This can obviously be a gradual process... I would suggest something like:
- create a fresh profile and only install STG and move the toolbar button to the left
- test if the popup is broken
- if the popup works fine, then proceed by changing one thing at a time to get closer to your "real world example" from your productive profile and test if the popup is broken
- e.g.:
- add some tab groups
- if you use vertical tabs, activate those in the settings
- if you heavily or maybe even exclusively use tab groups with tabs in specific containers, try to replicate a very basic example with those (that use case seems to be a problem in another issue that I've seen recently)
- if you have hundreds of tabs open on your productive profile, try to create a manual backup of your testing profile (just so you can easily restore a more simple state for issue reproduction), restore one of your productive backups to see if the popup is broken afterwards
- etc. etc.
Those are just some ideas - maybe you will have other things on your mind depending on how you use your browser and STG. If you have any changes in about:config, those might also be the culprit for the problem.
Edit:
I somehow forgot to mention the most obvious thing, but if you feel comfortable, you could see if there's any errors showing up in the addon debug console. That's different from the normal browser console, so don't get them confused. You can open the debug console for STG at about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox by hitting the Inspect button for STG.
The issue occurs for me with a clean profile, by just typing in the search box. I can create a new group, but then I can't expand it.
@FM33 interesting! Your report seems to be slightly different from the others though, right? For you the popup turns blank once you start interacting with it. On the clean profile, you mention interacting with the search box in particular breaking the popup - is there any difference in behavior to your productive profile?
Would you be able to take a look at the console output in the add-on debugging interface and see if any error comes up?
As from my edit above:
you could see if there's any errors showing up in the addon debug console. That's different from the normal browser console, so don't get them confused. You can open the debug console for STG at about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox by hitting the Inspect button for STG.
Also, just to clarify: the issue on a clean profile also only happens for you with the toolbar button on the left side of the URL bar, correct?
@philg-dev Yes, it's all the same as in productive profile. Only when on left side and starting to interact (typing or expanding, creating a group is the only feature that doesn't trigger the bug). The messages in the console :
set cache-storage from background [cache-storage.js:52:17]
(moz-extension://aa1de85b-4d40-4695-8997-629e6f1f7816/js/cache-storage.js)
Erreur dans les liens source : map is undefined
URL de la ressource : moz-extension://aa1de85b-4d40-4695-8997-629e6f1f7816/popup/popup.js
URL du lien source : vue-swatches.umd.min.js.map
It might be related to firefox : The same thing occured once with cookies autodelete popup (could'nt reproduce a second time though).
I see, yeah... The error that you're getting is just a missing source-map. That only affects the de-obfuscation / de-minify process for easier debugging. I get that error as well, even though I'm not affected by the broken popup issue, so that can't be the cause.
Since there's no other errors at all in the add-on debug console, it seems quite likely that there's something going wrong in Firefox directly, yes. Unfortunately we still don't really know what the exact circumstances are to reproduce the problem. The issue seems to only occur on certain machines... It's good to know that you could reproduce it on a fresh profile though, so at least we can rule out side-effects from other random user customizations.
I'm facing the same issue. With icon on the left - nothing, maybe only a blink of layout. On the right - works fine.
Here is the debugger output:
Endeavour OS 6.13.8-arch1-1 kernel Firefox 137.0-1 STG v5.3.1
I can reproduce the issue in a completely fresh Firefox profile (on Fedora 42). I can also reproduce it in a virtual machine with a clean installation of Fedora 42, which means this is not related to native graphical drivers. I can also reproduce it on a Live image of Fedora 40, after updating Firefox. So this is not a recent regression in some system library. I sometimes saw a blank popup on Firefox 136 and older, but it was rare. With Firefox 137, it's 100% reproducible for me.
The conditions:
- The STG icon must be on the left side of the address bar.
- A shortcut must be used to open the popup (F8 by default). -or-
- A mouse click is used to open the popup (that renders fine), but then any interactions with it (expanding a group, using the search field) triggers the white popup bug.
There are no errors in the addon debug console.
I've just also trivially reproduced it with Ubuntu 24.10 running in a virtual machine. Just install the system, update Firefox, install STG, and move the icon to the left.
I can somewhat reproduce this bug with ublock origin. Set a shortcut for ubo's "activate toolbar button" and it breaks under the same conditions. although it only breaks sometimes while STG breaks always.
I have the same issue. When STG icon is anywhere on the left of the search bar, none of the group settings render, just displaying a blank window. Issue occurs for me on two different devices running arch linux (endeavourOS). Issue doesn't occur on same devices when using Windows. Appears to be a firefox issue as I get the same behaviour from ubo on the left as well.
@Gonkul8or If you can reproduce this with another extension, would you care to file a Firefox bug?
Definitely sounds like something to report in Core then…
I would bet that this would be correlated with y'all using vertical tabs on the left, am I right? The reason I have this hunch is because I've seen other bugs like drag-and-drop tabs tearoff not working in specific directions depending on whether your vertical tabs are positioned to the left or to the right…
No, I reproduced the issue (see my comments above) even in a completely clean profile (clean OS, even) with all defaults, so no vertical tabs enabled.
I'm also having a similar problem: In my case it happens right after opening the popup, flashing the information briefly and then disappearing. This happens when I click on the icon, or when I use the shortcut. I'm currently using Ultramarine Linux 41 (KDE) with Firefox 137 and the updated extension.
As I've seen that they still haven't found the reason for this, I tested firefox 137 clean in VMs on the live cds of different OS.
Ultramarine Linux 41 (KDE)
- The error was only on the left side.
- The error occurred only after clicking to open a group with 3 tabs.
- The error occurred when opening the popup with more than 5 groups.
Images
Fedora 42 (Gnome)
- No error.
Images
KDE Neon 6.3
- The error was only on the left side.
- The error occurred only after clicking to open a group with 3 tabs.
- The error occurred when opening the popup with more than 5 groups.
Images
Ubuntu 24.04.02
- No error.
Images
Windows 11:
- I haven't tested it at the moment, but until last week I was using this extension without any problems.
These tests may seem to show that the problem is with KDE Plasma, but as users of other interfaces have also said they have problems, I think this just indicates that there is something in it by default that causes this problem and not in the others. The error may occur in the others because of something added/modified after installation.
I've also tested:
- Putting other extensions on the left gives the same problem, so it's not a problem exclusive to this extension.
Images
Anyway, I don't think it will be possible to get around it here, but here's some information that might be useful. :)
Hi there,
Same issue for me on Firefox 137.0, Fedora 42. It is not an STG-only issue : it also affects other extensions, like Ublock Origin, Cookie Auto Delete ; but not Bitwarden.
When the icons are on the left of the search/location bar, the popup becomes blank after a few mouse hits (2 or 3), even with no mouse or keyboard interaction in the popup. If I continue to click several times on the icon to open/close the popup, the popup eventually shows up.
When the popup is blank, I can still click on the invisible parts of the popup, though (eg if I click on the bottom of the STG blank popup, it opens the STG Manage Groups tab). So, this is definitely a display issue.
No error on the debug console, except the one already mentionned. I've tried to lauch the inspector to see it there was a css item hiding the popup, but I could not find it. I'm not really familiar with extensions debugging. See image below.
I could not find an issue on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org - did you find any ? Otherwise I'll file a bug there.
I could not find an issue on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org - did you find any ? Otherwise I'll file a bug there.
Please do, and link it here, thanks!
Firefox bug opened today on Bugzilla, May 4, 2025 : https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1964278
It worked for me again after updating to version 138. Try updating and testing, I think it may have already been fixed.
I just added a reference to this GitHub issue to the BugZilla ticket.
It would be helpful, if the remaining people that have been affected by the issue in this thread would report back, if the issue is resolved with Firefox 138+ for them. In that case, we could close the BugZilla ticket again...