Error loading hg38 genome in IGV 2.19.5

[Teitur Sævarsson]

Hi!

I'm having an issue loading the hg38 genome in IGV. I simply get the message "The genome 'Human (GRCh38/hg38)' could not be read" 

Version: IGV 2.19.5
Operating system: Windows 10

I've tried deleting the genome folder within the igv directory but that didn't change anything even though I see the genomes folder was recreated and a new hg38 json file within. I've used IGV for a long time and never encountered this issue before, nor have I ever made any changes to the configurations of the software. 

My igv0.log file has this to say (exchanged my actual username with <user>): 
INFO [Jul 14,2025 11:29] [GenomeManager] Loading genome: C:\Users\<user>\igv\genomes\hg38.json
SEVERE [Jul 14,2025 11:29] [GenomeComboBox] java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Connect timed out

I tried using a different network connection to see if that was the issue, but that also didn't help.

[igv-help]

Are you still having this problem? I did the exact same test (but on Mac) and it works for me. It could have been a temporary issue with a server.

Note that when you select the genome, you can also choose to download the sequence and/or the annotations (see the radio buttons below the full list of genomes). If you do that (when things are up and running again), then you will be able to use the genome without an internet connection, which means you will not have any problems with future server glitches.

Kveðja,

Helga

.

[Teitur Sævarsson]

Sæl Helga,

This must have been a temporary server issue because everything works normally now, without me doing anything since I wrote this post. Thanks for checking in!

Kveðja,

Teitur

[igv-help]

This can happen occasionally,   again using the option to download sequence and annotations will prevent it.