Chrome-based browser issues

[Herlock]

Hi, all.

I have three browsers installed in my Manjaro KDE desktop, those are Chromium, Brave and Firefox. Over the past few months, I have seen more and more problems pop up with the first two of these browsers, both of which are based on Chrome, while Firefox continues to work without any issues. The problems experienced include no longer been able to access Google services, such as Gmail, the Google Store, Google Maps, etc., and more recently, Captcha no longer works. These issues have rendered these two browsers mostly useless. Any ideas as to why I may be experiencing these issues?

Thanks

[ydar]

I don’t know, I switched over to using Vivaldi (also Chromium based) as my primary browser last year and haven’t had any issues with Google services. Perhaps you might want to give it a try?

[Herlock]

Thanks, ydar, that’s something to consider.

[cscs]

As per usual with browser-related issues … is it configuration or profile?
Have you cheked without any plugins/extensions, with a clean profile, etc ?
(also of course … is everything up to date?)

[Herlock]

Yes, my Manjaro KDE stable install is up to date, as I check every morning for updates. I had installed three extension, uBlock origin, HTTPS everywhere and HTML5 autoplay, removed them all and it made no difference. Puzzling.

Thanks

[cscs]

And a clean profile?

(point of reference - I actually use ungoogled-chromium, and even there things like gmail work)

[Herlock]

Can you explain a bit on what you mean by a “clean profile”?

[cscs]

The profile is the thing that is your continual browser ‘session’ - extensions, history, saved passwords, settings, cache, etc.

You can try with a temporary fresh one with something like:

chromium --user-data-dir=/tmp/chrom-test-profile

(as its on tmpfs it should be wiped at reboot)

[Herlock]

Thanks, cscs, will give this a try later today and report what happens.

[Herlock]

Tried it, it did fix the problems. So that means there’s something rotten in my Chromium and Brave’s profiles.

[cscs]

So then its up to you what to do …

You can try to ‘repair’ the current profile by cleaning its database, clearing the history/cache/etc, checking all extensions disabled, and one-by-one enabled, resetting configurations in about:config and/or replacing defaults in ‘preferences’, and so on.

Or you can simply create a new profile and add back in the stuff you want.

[Locutus]

First Brave just ;like Vivaldi, Chrome, Cent are base on Chromium not the other way around. I’m with @ydar on using Vivaldi over Brave. Vivaldi removes code that violates your privacy whereas Brave not only doesn’t do that they claim to be privacy centric while having a ads rewards program.

Now since it looks like you now know what’s causing the problem just create a new profile in each, delete the old profile, and build back up from there.

[Herlock]

Thanks guys, all’s good now.