New DMs have blank room avatars, rather than an avatar with the user you're talking with

[erikjohnston]

Steps to reproduce

1. Start a DM with a user
2. Notice that the room avatar is a standard "letter" avatar, and not the avatar of the user you're talking to. Even after they've joined

Outcome

What did you expect?

The room to have the avatar of the user

What happened instead?

The room had a blank avatar

Operating system

Ubuntu

Browser information

Chrome Version 95.0.4638.69 (Official Build) (64-bit)

URL for webapp

develop.element.io

Application version

Element version: b2e8f21-react-3583d99ef26d-js-af523522def0 Olm version: 3.2.3

Homeserver

jki.re

Will you send logs?

No

[SimonBrandner]

I don't think I can repro. Could you please try clearing the cache?

[xanderio]

Clearing the cache and reloading fixed this issue for me.

[shmerl]

I cleared the cache, but it didn't fix the issue for me. Some of the DM rooms are still missing avatars (server: matrix.org).

It started happening not very long ago, probably around the time this report was opened so it's clearly some recent regression.

To clarify, I'm talking about those which were already missing them. I haven't tested with new rooms.

Firefox 95.0, Debian testing.

[sjamaan]

This also happened for me, after updating to a newer Element version (1.9.4) only one (already open, not a new one) DM had its avatar reset to just the letter. This avatar had already been loaded before, that's the weird thing. And in the message history I can see the avatar changes. I'm not sure how to clear the cache, but opening the dev tools and pressing Ctrl-R and Ctrl-Shift-R didn't fix the issue.

NOTE: I'm using the desktop version of Element.

[manuke42]

I have the same problem on Element Desktop and now also on Schildichat (1.9.5-sc2), which did not have this problem before the latest update.

[SimonBrandner]

Could you all please try to clear your cache (Settings -> Help about -> Clear cache and reload)? This sounds like a sync bug that should be fixed by that. Does that work for you?

@shmerl, interesting. Could you please try running /converttoroom and then /converttodm? Maybe Element is just confused. Am I assuming correctly that these DMs have only 2 members?

[shmerl]

I tried, it didn't work. But I also have Firefox containers enabled, I need to check how to clean cache for them it could be related if cache is per container.

[shmerl]

Looks like cookies and cache with containers are somewhat messy: mozilla/multi-account-containers#303

[shmerl]

OK, what I did now, I cleared not just cache but sites data in Firefox too. That fixed the issue.

[sjamaan]

Clearing cache worked for me

[SimonBrandner]

I have opened a new issue which hopefully summarizes and simplifies this one

Closing in favour of #20064