Bad link can place Steam Overlay in permanent broken state that persists across sessions.

[Iexo Peoa]

Windows 10
Steam Version 1686880776

What happened:
Opened a discord link to an mp4 in Steam Overlay Browser (to see if that would work now), and it caused the browser and Overlay client to hang.

Attempted various methods to restart the Overlay and browser, but every time it reopened the same set of tabs, including the one that caused the overlay hang.

Closed game, logged off Steam, shut down computer, and went to bed. Upon starting everything up this morning and starting the game again, the overlay immediately loads all the previous tabs in the background, including the faulty one, causing it to start up in an already hung state. This now seems to be permanent.


What should happen:
A button in settings to flush persistent tabs and/or close the last-opened one, to prevent bad links from permanently breaking the Steam Overlay.

[RiO]

Start up Steam with the -vgui flag.
This will boot you back into the old UI.

Open Steam -> Steam Settings -> Web Browser
and click the button to delete the cache.

Quit Steam.
Start it back up normally with the new and broken UI.
See if the overlay browser sessions have reset.

And yes; you need to go the -vgui route for this.
Some complete moron decided that the new UI rework no longer needed the Web Browser settings present in the main Steam settings. it now only lives as a setting/option within the Steam Overlay. Where it will do you a fat lot of good (not!) when a rogue web page continuously crashes the overlay.


Not the first time they did something as bone-headedly stupid as this, which doesn't have any normal supported recovery options, either.

Back when the React-based login UI first launched there were a lot of issues with peoples' login screens coming up as a black screen, because the web renderer had crashed on them due to conflicts with their video driver. Only way to bypass that was to start Steam without using hardware accelerated rendering for web view content.
Which... kind of required being logged in to Steam to change the setting....

[Gigas]

Doesn't work, Steam Overlay still remembers the old session when returning back to the new UI :/

[Eric]

This happens too if you try to download something using the steam overlay browser and the folder menu is behind the web browser window.

[TomB]

Thank you for the bug report. This will be fixed in the next client beta update.

We're also adding the ability to clear the saved opened tabs in the game's Properties > General settings page.

[Eric]

Originally posted by TomB:

Thank you for the bug report. This will be fixed in the next client beta update.

We're also adding the ability to clear the saved opened tabs in the game's Properties > General settings page.

Perfect, thank you!

[Applethal]

Originally posted by TomB:

Thank you for the bug report. This will be fixed in the next client beta update.

We're also adding the ability to clear the saved opened tabs in the game's Properties > General settings page.

Even after deleting the data, my overlay only in one specific game is still broken.

[Prospero Finokkio]

I just encountered exact same problem. Link to a discord picture bricks steam overlay web browser. I cannot get rid of the tab, even after I delete the browser cache it just starts with that tab open and immediately stops working

[Iexo Peoa]

Originally posted by Zealoth:

I just encountered exact same problem. Link to a discord picture bricks steam overlay web browser. I cannot get rid of the tab, even after I delete the browser cache it just starts with that tab open and immediately stops working

I ended up "fixing" it by closing just the right instances of Steam Webhelper before killing the entire process, causing the offending tab (and a few others) to lose their data and break on next start. It happened purely by chance, but hopefully you can get lucky.

P.S. Gotta be fast, before it can recover the process.

[king of mercury]

anyway to fix this?

[luk_hau]

Originally posted by Subspace Tripmine:

anyway to fix this?

take a look at the response from TomB earlier in the thread - nothing worked for me but i remembered that i opened the crash inducing link while playing a particular game. i then opened that game's properties and deleted its overlay data (library -> "name of game" -> properties -> general settings)

note: during my previous troubleshooting attempts i switched my client to the latest beta version, that might be necessary for this approach to work (steam -> settings -> interface -> client beta participation)

[Raminlich]

I found Fix for this , In case of anyone still having the problem.
I've encountered same problem when I was browsing for guides in overlay browser last thing I opened was a github page which made overlay completely unresponsive I couldn't close the tabs or do anything at all,
Here is the fix :
- Exit the game and disconnect your internet so steam tells you that you have no connection
- Start the specific game that has this problem
- Open overlay and wait for browser to try to load your tabs but this time because of no internet connection you will get error and you can now close responsible tabs.

[luis3007]

Originally posted by Raminlich:

I found Fix for this , In case of anyone still having the problem.
I've encountered same problem when I was browsing for guides in overlay browser last thing I opened was a github page which made overlay completely unresponsive I couldn't close the tabs or do anything at all,
Here is the fix :
- Exit the game and disconnect your internet so steam tells you that you have no connection
- Start the specific game that has this problem
- Open overlay and wait for browser to try to load your tabs but this time because of no internet connection you will get error and you can now close responsible tabs.

Thanks!! This was the answer I was looking for!!!

[Fatal Frame]

Hmm. My discord isn't working on the steam browser.