1974078 - PWAs sometimes crash on launch

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox for Android :: PWA, defect)

Description

[James Heppell [:FormularSumo]]

Steps to reproduce:

Launch a PWA in Firefox

Examples in which I notice this happening a lot are WordReference and OpenStreetMaps. I have never noticed it using KanbanFlow over many years, nor Pinafore, I assumed because they use service workers to provide an offline-first approach, whereas WordReference and OpenStreetMaps do not work without a connection. However I think I've seen it happen with Cryptee (although considerably less), which likewise is offline-first, so I'm not sure what to make of this.

Actual results:

PWA often opens and immediately crashes, closing, and not showing in the list of open apps. Launching it again then loads without crashing. After this, some PWAs (WordReference in particular) can freeze for quite a few seconds before loading as normal (normally they load near instantly).

Expected results:

PWAs always launch without crashing

Comment 1

[James Heppell [:FormularSumo]]

https://photos.app.goo.gl/YZKXCxPvf7yL7yF28 - screen recording demonstrating the bug

Comment 2

[James Heppell [:FormularSumo]]

Have further tested and can confirm it happens with Cryptee as well. Seems to happen after it's been awhile (a few hours usually) and the PWA is not currently loaded in memory.

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:boek, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 4

[Jeff Boek [:boek]]

Hey James, if you navigate to about:crashes is this crash present? If so could you link to the crash here?

Comment 5

[James Heppell [:FormularSumo]]

Hey, I've taken a look, but unfortunately not. The last crash is from August 2024, so I suspect it and previous ones are unrelated, given this particular crash has happened many times since then. I think it probably doesn't show because Firefox itself isn't crashing as far as I can tell, only the PWA instance/tab which gets forced-closed after loading.

Comment 6

[Jeff Boek [:boek]]

How frequently does the crash occur? Could you encounter the crash while having logcat runnging?

Comment 7

[James Heppell [:FormularSumo]]

Attachment: logcat-firefox-PWA-crash.txt

Comment 8

[James Heppell [:FormularSumo]]

For WordReference (worst case scenario), I'd say it happens at least one in two times when it's been over an hour since I last opened it, but it's still showing in the Android "Recents Screen" (currently open apps).

I did manage to capture it on Logcat and I've attached all that parts that I think might be relevant to this crash (let me know if there's something missing and I can send the full file).