Pinned tabs always load from cache.

[Octaviorios]

Preliminary Checks

• [x] I have read and understood the important section above.
• [x] I have searched existing issues and avoided creating duplicates.
• [x] I am not filing an enhancement request.
• [x] I have checked that this issue cannot be reproduced on Mozilla Firefox.
• [x] I have checked that this issue can be reproduced once I removed all my Mods and Custom CSS.

What happened?

update edit: this seems to not happen ALWAYS, but sometimes.

When opening an unloaded pinned tab, they always load from cache instead of actually loading new content.

This happens all the time, with every tab.

It gets extremely annoying as i have to click on "reload" apart from clicking on the tab, making using Zen very tedious over any other browser.

Expected behavior

Every pinned tab should load "fresh" whenever clicking on it, with its latest content.

Actual behavior

Every pinned tab loads from cache, making me have to click on "reload" after loading the tab additionally from already clicking on the tab.

Steps to reproduce

e.g: I have pinned the "Releases" site from Zen's github to keep up to date with the new release notes. When i open zen and click on that pinned tab, i get the latest release is "1.15" from 2 weeks ago. Not only that, i can even navigate further into deeper sections of the cached site, like clicking on the "X commits since this release" link and continue browsing from cache. Now, if i refresh the tab, suddenly 1.16 appears from yesterday and i can actually navigate on the current content of the site.

Screenshots and videos

No response

Version

1.16b

What platform are you seeing the problem on?

Windows - x64

What component is this issue related to?

Tabs

Relevant log output if applicable

[Propheticus]

I'll assume the issue is specifically / only relevant when starting Zen. Auto-refreshing any tab you come back to during an active session sounds like a bad idea. (Entered data would be lost on any tab you leave and come back to. )

If you want all pins to load upon startup you can change browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand to false in about:config (like Firefox's default. Zen sets this true by default) Of course not a good idea for users with a lot of pins in folders.

[Octaviorios]

I'll assume the issue is specifically / only relevant when starting Zen. Auto-refreshing any tab you come back to during an active session sounds like a bad idea. (Entered data would be lost on any tab you leave and come back to. )

It's not a "startup" problem. It's the overall behaviour of pinned tabs.

If you want all pins to load upon startup you can change browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand to false in about:config (like Firefox's default. Zen sets this true by default) Of course not a good idea for users with a lot of pins in folders.

And no, im also not talking about the "browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand" option, that will make it so it starts every pinned tab when the browser starts, which is not what i'm referring to, nor what i'd like to happen.

The behavior i'm talking about is when you click on any pinned tab, the browser loads it from cache, when the expectation would be for the tab to load in the same manner that any non-pinned tab loads, grabbing the latest state of the site.

As another example, Steam released an updated UI for their storefront yesterday. When i opened Steam (i have it pinned AND it was unloaded), it loaded it with the previous UI. I had to click on "reload"(or press f5) for the site to ACTUALLY load and BAM, the new UI was there.

[Octaviorios]

Another example to try and make things more clear: If i click on Youtube (again, also pinned and not loaded), and i hadn't clicked on it for 3 days, what i'll see in my subscriptions feed is videos from 3 days ago, because the browser is pulling from cache and not really going to youtube.

This might be an intended behavior but god do i hope not, it makes 0 sense.

[DeVelox]

I'm not sure when this started but I think I'm affected by the same issue. For example, I "close" a pinned/essential tab with the full suite of reset, unload and switch options selected in the settings. When I open it next time, it remembers things like scroll position, or if the "queue" mini-player was open on YouTube. I would expect it to behave as a freshly opened tab just with the pinned URL, and I'm pretty sure it did that in the past. Having to manually reset little things like that kind of negates half the convenience those tabs provide in the first place.

[Octaviorios]

I'm not sure when this started but I think I'm affected by the same issue. For example, I "close" a pinned/essential tab with the full suite of reset, unload and switch options selected in the settings. When I open it next time, it remembers things like scroll position, or if the "queue" mini-player was open on YouTube. I would expect it to behave as a freshly opened tab just with the pinned URL, and I'm pretty sure it did that in the past. Having to manually reset little things like that kind of negates half the convenience those tabs provide in the first place.

Sounds exactly like my issue, yup.

[sandroshu]

I'm not sure when this started but I think I'm affected by the same issue. For example, I "close" a pinned/essential tab with the full suite of reset, unload and switch options selected in the settings. When I open it next time, it remembers things like scroll position, or if the "queue" mini-player was open on YouTube. I would expect it to behave as a freshly opened tab just with the pinned URL, and I'm pretty sure it did that in the past. Having to manually reset little things like that kind of negates half the convenience those tabs provide in the first place.

Sounds exactly like my issue, yup.

Yes, I have the same problem. Not sure if it is related but I also have a problem when Unloaded pinned/essential tabs are blank when clicked and need to press F5/Refresh to load. This started recently (2-3 weeks ago) on macOS.

It does not matter if browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand is true or false

[Octaviorios]

I'm not sure when this started but I think I'm affected by the same issue. For example, I "close" a pinned/essential tab with the full suite of reset, unload and switch options selected in the settings. When I open it next time, it remembers things like scroll position, or if the "queue" mini-player was open on YouTube. I would expect it to behave as a freshly opened tab just with the pinned URL, and I'm pretty sure it did that in the past. Having to manually reset little things like that kind of negates half the convenience those tabs provide in the first place.

Sounds exactly like my issue, yup.

Yes, I have the same problem. Not sure if it is related but I also have a problem when Unloaded pinned/essential tabs are blank when clicked and need to press F5/Refresh to load. This started recently (2-3 weeks ago) on macOS.

It does not matter if browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand is true or false

Interesting, i do not have that one problem in windows. Might be related and come through the same backend issue though.

[ArtBotsman]

I have the same frustration with how pinned tabs behave (MacOS). When they are closed(with minus button)/unloaded, reloading them just restores the previous cached state (content, scroll and other things), instead of refreshing the content. This behavior is preventing me from fully switching to Zen Browser from other browser. Edit: In my logic, when a pinned tab is closed, it should work like a bookmark; and when it is loaded, it becomes a tab.

[devdinc]

Disabling browser.sessionstore.restore_tabs_lazily will solve the problem, browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand actually makes it so you need to click on the tab to load the tab, if it is set to false it will load with browser initialization. lazy is a slang for cache/memoization.

[Propheticus]

@devdinc Lazy loading means loading in a more gradual way, 1 by 1 or a few at a time, instead of loading all at once. If you set on demand loading false so that pins automatically load on startup instead of after clicking them, this lazy restore makes sure you don't cripple the system by loading them all together. I doubt this setting will solve the issue.

[devdinc]

@devdinc Lazy loading means loading in a more gradual way, 1 by 1 or a few at a time, instead of loading all at once. If you set on demand loading false so that pins automatically load on startup instead of after clicking them, this lazy restore makes sure you don't cripple the system by loading them all together. I doubt this setting will solve the issue.

I see. Since lazy usually means on demand loading, and that already exist, I assumed lazy loading preference here means load what's on the disk.

In the past to solve this problem I used an extension that would look at local storage last accessed time, and when it is not that time it would force reload the page for selected site urls or domains, custom style script was the extension name.

[devdinc]

I made a better version of the script, since unload uses bfcache, one issue, back and forward uses the same thing, I don't see a workaround for now. event.persisted is the same. I also hope a better way than this workaround will exist.

  const nav = performance.getEntriesByType('navigation')[0];
  if (nav.type === 'back_forward') {
    console.log('✅ Page restored from bfcache, reloading...');
    location.reload();
  }

[arcticfoxwpg]

I also have this same frustration with how pinned tabs behave (MacOS). Such a strange behavior to load the entire website in an old cached version after closing the browser.

We need this fixed, and a setting to load all pinned tabs on browser open, or only load them individually upon clicking them.

[Propheticus]

a setting to load all pinned tabs on browser open, or only load them individually upon clicking them

That setting exists, see https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/issues/10514#issuecomment-3329752989

[hadorean]

Bumping this because I have the same issue: any pinned news site I visit will always load their cached version from a few days ago and auto-scroll to the previous scrolling point where they were when I closed them. I always have to force a refresh and scroll back up.

I tried the different settings mentioned in the thread and disabling anything called auto-scroll in about:config, but no solution so far.