[Bug]: WSL-only mode: Browser panel stays on the new-tab page although the page loads#32940

opened5d agobyTthp728

Before submitting

I searched existing issues and did not find a duplicate.
I included enough detail to reproduce or investigate the problem.

Area

apps/desktop

Steps to reproduce

On Windows, turn on the WSL backend with WSL-only mode. desktop-settings.json has "wslBackendEnabled": true, "wslDistro": "Ubuntu", "wslOnly": true.
Start T3 and open a thread in a project in the WSL environment.
Open the Browser panel, type any URL and press Enter. I tried google.com and splitwise.com.

Expected behavior

The page renders in the panel and the URL bar shows its address.

Actual behavior

The panel stays on the new-tab page. Its "Recently used" list already shows the URL as "just now", but the URL bar stays empty, the loading bar never finishes, and the tab gets no favicon.

The desktop main process does load the page. In desktop.trace.ndjson, every PreviewManager.navigate exits Success and a PreviewManager.publishFavicon follows it. renderer-history.ndjson records dom-ready for the preview WebContents each time. The panel never picks up that state.

At startup the web client logs one failure from EnvironmentRpc.request: EnvironmentRpcUnavailableError: <windows-host> is not connected. <windows-host> is the Windows-side environment, which WSL-only mode doesn't start.

Pressing Enter again on the blank tab can raise this toast, which is how I first noticed the problem:

Error invoking remote method 'desktop:preview-navigate': PreviewOperationError: Desktop preview operation failed: navigate.loadURL (tab [...], WebContents 3), caused by ERR_ABORTED (-3).

With "wslOnly": false and the WSL backend still on, the same steps render the page.

I haven't traced the client code. #17090 notes that the native webview path only applies to the server the desktop launched as its local primary, so my guess is that the panel waits for preview state from the Windows-side environment, which never starts in WSL-only mode.

Running --disable-gpu made no difference, so it isn't a GPU compositing problem.

Impact

Major degradation or frequent failure

Version or commit

0.1.8-nightly.20261108.4353

Environment

Windows 11 25H2 (build 26200), WSL 3.0.3.0, Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS, T3 Code (Nightly) desktop (Electron 44.10.1, Chrome 152). The server runs from the staged WSL runtime.

Logs or stack traces

shell

1	# desktop.trace.ndjson, one navigate (trimmed)
2	17:43:09.223 desktop.ipc.preview.navigate Success 517 ms
3	17:43:09.223 PreviewManager.navigate Success 517 ms
4	17:43:09.621 PreviewManager.registerWebview Success
5	17:43:09.756 PreviewManager.publishFavicon Success
6
7	# renderer-history.ndjson
8	17:43:09.620 event=dom-ready webContentsId=3 surface=preview
9
10	# web client span, forwarded to server.trace.ndjson
11	17:43:03 EnvironmentRpc.request status=2 EnvironmentRpcUnavailableError: <windows-host> is not connected.
12
13	# the toast's cause, from desktop.trace.ndjson
14	PreviewManager.navigate Failure PreviewOperationError: Desktop preview operation failed: navigate.loadURL (...)
15	[cause]: Error: ERR_ABORTED (-3) loading 'https://splitwise.com/'

Workaround

With T3 closed, set "wslOnly": false in %USERPROFILE%\.t3\userdata\desktop-settings.json and keep "wslBackendEnabled": true.

Related: #27035 (the panel and the agent see different browsers, also reproduced with wslOnly: true) and #17090 (how WSL environment previews are routed).

AAlexzzz20084d ago

I'm also experiencing this issue with WSL-only mode enabled: the built-in Browser panel cannot open/display web pages, so I cannot use the browser preview in this mode.

Expected behavior: opening a URL in the Browser panel should display the page normally.

JJulius Marminge1d ago

This is the same problem as #26147, so I'm closing it in favour of that one. If it is different, say how and it will be reopened.