Accessing Youtube.com causes immediate unlogged tab crash
Hey,
I've been having an odd issue with Firefox where tabs where I attempt to access youtube.com will immediately crash. This issue first arose when I attempted to log in to Youtube, and had never occurred before. When I did that login, the tab crashed, and I have been unable to access the website since (100% crash rate).
Basic details: The website does not visually load at all. However, the URL bar icons for the website do briefly appear prior to tab crash. (Autoplay button, etc). The crash is never reported in about:crashes.
I've tried the following tests, unsuccessfully: - Logging out of all Google accounts separately - Disabling all extensions - Transferring all of my data to a new computer - Reinstalling Firefox - Rebooting Firefox in troubleshooting mode
This problem does not occur on my Windows machine but occurred on my previous intel-based Mac and now on my current Apple Silicon Mac.
The only success I have had is in creating an entirely new Firefox profile. However, I would prefer to fix the issue, as I assume that porting all my settings to the new profile would... also probably bring the bug along.
Thanks for reading & any advice is appreciated.
الحل المُختار
Backup the profile then slowly reset changes back to default until it starts working. Start with deleting the prefs.js file to see if an about:config setting is responsible.
Read this answer in context 👍 1All Replies (4)
الحل المُختار
Backup the profile then slowly reset changes back to default until it starts working. Start with deleting the prefs.js file to see if an about:config setting is responsible.
zeroknight said
Backup the profile then slowly reset changes back to default until it starts working. Start with deleting the prefs.js file to see if an about:config setting is responsible.
Hey, thanks for the advice. I gave this a shot but unfortunately it seems that deleting my prefs.js file causes all page loads to hang indefinitely? Not sure if that is a common issue. I tested further by restoring -> deleting -> restoring and when I have my old prefs.js, everything is fine, but when I reboot Firefox after deleting prefs.js, all pages fail to load/hang indefinitely. Not sure if that is cause for concern but I will look into manually checking which configs I have changed.
Edit: There are... a lot of configurations, but I'll try a quick binary search...
Edit: Apologies, those page hangs appear to have been caused by an extension. Removing all extensions + prefs.js allows pages to load. But, youtube.com still crashes immediately.
Modified by Michael
Looks like my response was deleted (too many edits?) but thanks to your help I've narrowed the issue down to the ls-archive.sqlite file. It looks like I can safely delete it (and maybe lose a bit of old data on the way) but it would be nice to figure out the specific issue, however I assume I'd have to install sqlite and manually update the db which seems like a bit of a pain.
My best guess for what is causing the issue is that YouTube is trying to load a particular value from localstorage on page load, but it's been possibly corrupted in storage, and thus crashes the page. It's a bit odd that none of this seems to be logged in about:crashes but I guess that is life. Seems like with some kind of page debugging this should be a really easy thing to figure out, though.
Modified by Michael
Another update. Although deleting ls-archive.sqlite fixes youtube, it breaks other sites (file corrupted, can't access key errors in console), as I assume there is some kind of global key store that tells websites which keys are set, but accessing these 'set' keys that are now deleted in the actual ls-archive causes internal JS crashes. Ah...
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