Chrome Extensions Disappearing ✨ 🎩 🙈

[Rodney Kuhn]

Hi All, 

Our extension seems to have gone missing (i.e. it is not loading) for a large percentage of our users.  It seems to be working fine for the remaining users who are also on the latest version.

Summary:
- Since the time our extension was published (and approved) last week, we noticed an influx of complaints from users who say their extension
has disappeared. We see the same in our internal stats.
- We have managed to reproduce this on different Chrome profiles and it seems that the extension simply does NOT load at ALL and there are NO
errors in the console, NO errors on background page or anywhere else.
- This issue is possibly arising when the extension upgrades to the latest version but we have seen this for new installs too. When looking at the Extensions Setting screen in Chrome, it looks like the user has the latest version.

- We have also seen extensions disappearing after computer restart.

To resolve the issue, users need to restart Chrome. However, most users never restart Chrome. Removing or reinstalling the extension does not help and neither does creating new Chrome tabs.  

After properly restarting Chrome, the extension loads and it works fine but there is this error to say "Extension context invalidated".

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Rémi]

Hi Rodney,

Just a testimony as I have no real solution either.

We are seeing the same kind of problem for a while (Chrome not starting the extension, extension code never executed).

For us, it happens only for MacOS users (with multiple Chrome profiles synced). Neither uninstalling / reinstalling the extension nor restarting Chrome helps.

The only solution we found to get it back is to remove the Chrome profile from the Chrome profile menu and re-create it.

We first thought it was due to a corrupted profile but it happens very often (mostly after an extension update / install as we always have MacOS users impacted during internal non-regression testing which starts by updating / installing the latest version of the extension)

[MG]

Hi, unfortunately don't know a solution either, but I also saw the 'Extension context invalidated' error a few times all of a sudden, but in my case refreshing the extension from 'chrome://extensions' resolved the problem.

On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 3:15:36 PM UTC+2, Rodney Kuhn wrote:

[EricLaw-MSFT]

Providing specific Chrome version information and details (ideally the URL to install the extension) will greatly aid in troubleshooting. A screenshot of the chrome://extensions page showing the extension might help too.

FWIW, for a few weeks Chrome had a significant regression that would cause extensions to get marked as "Corrupt"; when this happens, the extension is automatically disabled until it is manually repaired.

This bug was fixed and merged to Chrome 76 a few weeks back: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=977805

[ndvbd]

Same issue here, the background script of an extension, after some time (few days/weeks), disappear and our extension stops working.