After 10+ years your Extension no longer works :(

[Nemophilist888]

I'm on Firefox Mac and have installed and reinstalled the companions over and over and no joy. I even found a roll-back to versions 8.000 and earlier and installed those but it still says the freaking companion app is not installed when it IS!

Why did you break your product so it's unusable? If what you want is money/subscription then at least be clear about that and give us a path to do that!

[mjs]

If your bringing an issue here about running the companion app running MacOS then there has been quite a few posts about that.

Specifically is your OS below 10.15 ?  then the 2x companion app version is not compatible. You would need to drop back to 1.6.3

Also did you make sure to disable automatic updates after rolling back on the extension.

Important: when you reply use Reply all and delete everything after clicking show quoted text button.

--

A vdh user

[jcv...@gmail.com]

Hi,

If you have an OS < 10.15 and you need to rollback versions are here:

Extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/versions/
CoApp: https://www.downloadhelper.net/install-coapp-v1
jerome

[Nemophilist888]

I rolled back both the helper and the companion to 1.6.3 and still get "Checking companion app returned: An unexpected error occurred".
I've unistalled and reinstalled, rebooted, etc. OS 10.13.6  Firefox 115. Use the helper weekly for over 10 years and no issues until the Jan 4th update.

[Brian Underwood]

Which version did you roll back to? I was still having issues after rolling back to 8.0.0.6, so I uninstalled that version and the companion app. I then rolled back to 8.0.0.0, and re-installed the 1.6.3 companion app. After installing 8.0.0.0, I immediately went to extension settings and turned off automatic updates and it has worked perfectly since then.

[Duke Marlborough]

I had the same problem: It is INEXCUSABLE not to check for version compatibility before updating someone's system.

It SHOULD have known that the new update was incompatible with MacOS < 10.15, yet it mangled my 10.13 system.

Worse, i didn't know what versions to go back to, since these components are not in files or documented anywhere in the OS.

I took the advice above, went back to 8.0.0.0, and now seems all is well. I don't see any info anywhere on which version of the tool works with which versions of the co-app, which versions of OS and Firefox. I'm just guessing. Why would there be a partial auto-update to begin with, if it makes the tool incompatible with the co-app immediately? Better to do both simultaneously, and with the matching versions.

[Wild Willy]

You folks keep blaming VDH for things it has never done & can never do. A lot of the
complaining here is due to things that are your fault. So let me try to lay things out
for you in a way that should stop you from continuing to bash people who did NOT do what
you say they did. Understand that I am a fellow user, NOT an employee of VDH.

When Michel (and more recently, Paul) comes up with a new release of VDH, he submits it
for approval. There are 3 approving entities: Mozilla for Firefox, Google for Chrome,
Microsoft for Edge. Only those 3. VDH isn't supported on any other browser. So those
are the only approvals that are sought. Once VDH is submitted, that is the end of
Michel/Paul's involvement. Understand that. They are out of the loop from that point
forward.

Each one of those 3 companies approves the VDH browser extension on its own schedule.
When VDH is approved, a new version appears on, respectively, the Mozilla add-ons
repository, the Google Chrome web store, the Microsoft Edge web store. Notice that the
VDH guys don't have any control over when this happens.

When the new version of VDH appears, your browser is notified. Your browser. And it's
not the VDH guys doing the notifying. It's one of those companies doing the notifying.

What happens next is entirely, completely, totally, 100% under your control. In the
browser settings -- not the VDH settings -- the browser settings -- there is a place
where you tell your browser -- you -- tell your browser -- what to do when an update to
an extension becomes available. You can tell your browser -- you -- can tell your
browser -- whether to accept the update automatically or leave it for you to choose when
or whether to update the extension. You control this. You do. If you told your browser
to automatically update VDH, then it is your fault that it gets automatically updated.
Stop blaming VDH for this. VDH didn't do it. You did by telling your browser to
automatically update VDH. Oh, you say, but I didn't tell my browser to automatically
update VDH. You must have. If the default setting for an extension is to automatically
update it, that is your doing. It may be a default behavior, but it's on your shoulders
to know this & change it if it's appropriate for your environment. Point the finger at
yourself. It's your fault if you didn't know this. And it certainly isn't the
responsibility of the VDH guys to train you on how to use your browser. They are
responsible for VDH, not your browser. You need to learn how to use your browser.

When it comes to compatibility, that is for you to determine. That is why the extension
update setting in the browser exists. If you're running some environment that you know
can't handle a new release, you need to turn off automatic updates.

Now, all of that deals with the VDH browser extension. The CoApp is an entirely
different item. It is hosted on neither Mozilla nor Google nor Microsoft. It is hosted
on GitHub, where the VDH guys have full control of what appears there. The CoApp is not
automatically updated. You have to go to GitHub & get the CoApp yourself. Then you have
to run the CoApp installation program. There is nothing automatic about that. The CoApp
repository on GitHub includes every version of the CoApp there's ever been, including
versions that are so old they won't work today. So if you want to go back to any older
CoApp, it's there for you to get any time you want.

Next issue is what to do once you have caused yourself the problem of having an update to
VDH automatically applied. You want to roll back to an earlier version. In the case of
both the Google Chrome web store & the Microsoft Edge web store, it looks to me like they
do not maintain an archive of back levels. The web stores host both the general
availability VDH versions as well as the beta VDH versions. And there is no repository
of old versions. This is reprehensible on their part, but not the fault of the VDH guys.
I don't use either of those browsers so I am going by what I see when I visit those web
stores. It appears to me that if you want old versions of the browser extension for
Chrome or Edge, you're going to have to ask the VDH guys for those. Maybe they have such
an archive somewhere on the VDH web site. I don't know. You should ask them.

The situation is much better for Firefox. The Mozilla add-ons repository includes a
small archive of backlevel versions of VDH. It's under the heading Version History on
the VDH extension install page on the Mozilla add-ons repository. For the beta versions
of VDH for Firefox, the installation page includes a long list of previous beta versions
below the green install button. Just scroll the page down & you'll see all the links.
That page is hosted on the VDH web site so it's completely under control of the VDH guys.

On the home page of this forum, at the top, there is some text with bold characters. You
need to pay attention to that. It holds some information that you will almost certainly
need.

So now it's time for you all to quit blaming the VDH guys for things they didn't do.
They can't know what your configuration is. They can't decide which combination of
version of browser extension & CoApp version is right for you. Only you can determine
that. So determine it & roll your environment back to whatever setup you want. Then
disable automatic updates to VDH so you -- YOU -- don't screw your environment up again.

[jcv...@gmail.com]

If you really need to rollback versions are here: