VDH won't work in Edge Dev or Canary

[DavidBE]

As Edge has finally added and fixed some things that finally make it an acceptable browser to me, I'm just testing it out in comparison to my usual Firefox. Problem - I generally use Edge Canary or sometimes Dev, but the Edge VDH won't work in either, although it is working in standard Edge (and Firefox, and Chrome and Chrome Beta).

The issue is that it in Edge Dev and Canary it says 'Companion App not installed' and under that 'Checking companion app returned: Access to the specified native messaging host is forbidden.'  While standard Edge says it is installed, followed by 'Found companion app: VdhCoApp 1.6.0

Companion app binary: C:\Program Files\net.downloadhelper.coapp\bin\net.downloadhelper.coapp-win-64.exe'  as do the VDHs in Firefox and Chrome and Chrome Beta.

VDH version in the Edges is 7.3.8.0. Edge Dev is 90.0.782.0, Canary 900.0.787.0, standard 88.705.56.

I have checked all settings (and experimental flags) and permissions in the three Edge versions and find no difference between them that could account for this.

Anything I can change? And is there an Edge VDH Beta anywhere to get it up to the same version as in Firefox and Chrome?

[jcv...@gmail.com]

Sorry we only give support for official releases.

jerome

[DavidBE]

That's a shame, as Dev has only just acquired features I need to use Edge, and that's going to be some time before it gets to Beta, then standard. It's also rather a surprising attitude - the other 27 extensions I have syncing between Edge Standard, Dev and Canary all work fine in all three release channels (I don't bother with Edge Beta), and on the few occasions one of them has stopped working in Dev or Camary, or a Chrome extension in Chrome Beta, the extension creators have been very grateful for getting a heads-up on a forthcoming problem that they've then managed to fix and have tested before the bug was released on the much wider standard release channel usership who're more likely to panic and less likely to make a coherent bug report and help with installing extension betas to test fixes. I'd have thought the VDH problem is most likely a simple one of the Companion App installer not registering a few things needed for it to work on the Dev and Canary channels.

Oh well, saves me money. All these years of using VDH in Firefox I've never needed a license for my usage. I seem to be mostly needing HLS stream downloads these days, and seeing the HLS limitation in Edge VDH that isn't in Firefox, I was thinking of paying for the Edge VDH license if VDH had worked in Dev. But it doesn't, so I see there are a bunch of other HLS downloading extensions for Edge now which are free and unrestricted, and a number have Firefox versions too. I'm sure one will do (and hopefully free me from some of VDH's more irritating quirks).

[DavidBE]

Oh - that turned out to be easy. Most of the time side-effects of my disability medications just completely fog my brain, but in one of the short, infrequent intervals of semi-normal brain function, it occurred to me that my Open In Firefox and Open In Chrome extensions also use a small native client, but they work fine in all release channels right up to Canary. So after Googling the Native messaging host error message, the first couple of paragraphs of the first result made me think I should break out Regedit and look at and compare the NativeMessagingHosts keys in the Registry. Immediate obvious difference - the Open in- (and a couple of other native clients that work in all release channels) keys - for Edge, Chrome and Firefox - are in the NativeMessagingHosts in the HKCU hive, while the VDH net.downloadhelper.coapp keys are in the HKLM hive. So I just added an Edge NativeMessagingHosts key for net.downloadhelper.coapp in HK Current User - call that 20 seconds - and reopened the VDH settings in Edge Canary ... and lo and behold. and without restarting either Edge or the extension, it now reports that the CoApp is installed and all works fine with Edge Canary (and also Edge Dev). So it was just the CoApp installer creating HKLM keys rather than HKCU ones that was the only problem.

Now the only other problem is that after years of unlimited HLS downloads on Firefox without a license, I'd have to pay for that for VDH with Edge ... and in the time before the clarity to get VDH working with the release channels I usein Edge , I did search and find some alternative free unlimited HLS downloader extensions. With me living only on state disability benefit, I'm now not so inclined to pay for a license; especially after the dismissive reply to my original post up above.

[jcv...@gmail.com]

Well done, thanks for the feedback.

jerome