A message is now "stuck" to the bottom of a room

[colemickens]

I sent a message. I guess some network interruption happened. Now I permanently see that message pinned as if it were just sent to the room. It's been like this for a week.

[PatrickRose]

I've seen this as well (I submitted a rage shake), I think there's a general issue for it

It's fixed by clearing your cache.

[zeratax]

@benparsons I have a message stuck now for 1 week and neither deleting it nor the cache helps :/

[benparsons]

@zeratax did you submit a rageshake? I'm not on the riotX team but they will be able to fix this if they have more info about the cause.

[zeratax]

Just did!

[Destroyer]

any progress/workaround? i noticed when updating to a newer version it fixes itself until another message gets stuck

[TheCycoONE]

Seeing this as well on a zenpad 300m running Android 7.0. I have not seen it happen on a Galaxy S9 running Android 9.

[neutralinsomniac]

Friend of mine is also seeing this on her Pixel. Annoyingly it's an image that's stuck to the bottom, which makes reading messages very difficult.

[olymk2]

same I now have an image stuck at the bottom of a room on Motorola g6

This is in a private family room so dont really want to share all the room log, can you share just that message info in riotx some how ?

[apiraino]

Reporting that with RiotX 0.21 (and Motorola G5) stuck messages disappeared (not sure if coincidence or specific bugfix)

[Vaelio]

Still a thing for some friends on 0.22

[mureni]

This is still an issue with 0.22, brought about by the CloudFlare outage on July 17 2020 when a message was sent but not synced.

[DooMMasteR]

The issue persists.
I have a stuck message from 2020-07-01 which also does reappear after deleting caches/data.

Super annoying.

[sinni800]

Since "stable" Riot recently updated to Riot/X and renamed to Element (At least I think this is the right repo now) I also got this issue and it just recently appeared. App is version 1.0.2, random message is stuck to the bottom. For someone else, it's an image which obscures more than half the screen.

No delete option, nothing.

[Avi0n]

I have a friend running the latest version of Element Android and is experiencing this issue as well. An image is stuck at the bottom of his screen and he cannot interact with it at all.

[rarepops]

Please this is really annoying!

[subins2000]

Yes it's very annoying! Any workarounds to get the message sent ?

[zeratax]

@subins2000 usually clearing cache under settings > general works for me

[bluecmd]

@zeratax Does not work for me sadly, message still remains. Force stopped the app, cleared the cache. On startup the message from a few days ago is still the "newest" message even though there are several from earlier today.

[zeratax]

@bluecmd I do specifically mean the option in element not the android option. but this didn't use to work for always either, just seems to work now reliably

[subins2000]

@zeratax Yup, that worked ! It cleared the pending messages and now I can send messages in the room again. I thought you meant the "Clear cache" button in android settings. I didn't know there was a clear cache button in Element App -> Settings -> General
@bluecmd

[bluecmd]

Wow indeed! That worked for me! The clear cache in Android did not (might be a reasonable to make it clear this cache as well?) but this one indeed finally fixed this annoying issue. I am sure it will be back, but at least this workaround worked (this time!).

[DooMMasteR]

Yay at least a temporary fix, after multiple years of enduring this persistent issue.

[Destroyer]

Issue persists, stuck messages on version 1.0.10

[Ezwen]

Issue persists, stuck messages on version 1.0.10

Same here

[HammyHavoc]

Long-pressing it does nothing for me. After a few seconds, the messages briefly glows and it is like I never tapped it in the first place as no contextual menu appears and the message also isn't cancelled. 🤔

…

________________________________ From: Salamandar ***@***.***> Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2021 3:29:00 PM To: vector-im/element-android ***@***.***> Cc: Hammy Havoc ***@***.***>; Mention ***@***.***> Subject: Re: [vector-im/element-android] A message is now "stuck" to the bottom of a room (#516) @HammyHavoc<https://github.com/HammyHavoc> while waiting for a real fix, the workaround is to "cancel sending" by long-pressing the message. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#516 (comment)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAD3BD5YOOMRUWLEKP6SZWDTZQNSZANCNFSM4IOT3ZZQ>.

[Nan0Scho1ar]

Long-pressing it does nothing for me. After a few seconds, the messages briefly glows and it is like I never tapped it in the first place as no contextual menu appears and the message also isn't cancelled. 🤔
…
________________________________ From: Salamandar @.> Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2021 3:29:00 PM To: vector-im/element-android @.> Cc: Hammy Havoc @.>; Mention @.> Subject: Re: [vector-im/element-android] A message is now "stuck" to the bottom of a room (#516) @HammyHavochttps://github.com/HammyHavoc while waiting for a real fix, the workaround is to "cancel sending" by long-pressing the message. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#516 (comment)>, or unsubscribehttps://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAD3BD5YOOMRUWLEKP6SZWDTZQNSZANCNFSM4IOT3ZZQ.

I also encountered this issue yesterday on mobile and could not open the menu to cancel send. The solution mentioned a while back (clearing the cache) did still work for me to remove the stuck message.

[HammyHavoc]

Emptying the cache does nothing for me in terms of this issue.

[HammyHavoc]

Scratch that: I was emptying the app's cache within Android's Settings. I just emptied it via Element's Settings > General menu and we're all good. Interesting!

[ShadowJonathan]

@HammyHavoc that's not "emptying the cache" in the sense you're removing only images and such, it basically refreshes your entire client and re-downloads all room information from your homeserver, which could've taken a while. (just as a small warning to who else wants to try that route)

[newhoa]

Scratch that: I was emptying the app's cache within Android's Settings. I just emptied it via Element's Settings > General menu and we're all good. Interesting!

Thanks! That's the only thing that worked for me as well.

[benparsons]

I met an element user IRL over the weekend, and learned that he sees this bug about once a week, at which point he immediately recognises it and clears the cache. He's stopped complaing about it because it's just part of using the app for him.

This bug is really, really damaging for UX and people's impression of Element as a whole.

[ShadowJonathan]

Reminder that I posted a potential root cause up there, but i think it didnt get picked up by the team.

I can't assess its accuracy anymore as I mainly use Element iOS, but if other people can confirm that reproduction is accurate, that'd be nice. One way to reproduce it would be the following;

1. Send a message from your device in very bad network conditions. (So connectivity is slow)
2. Look on another client for whenever that message arrives, when it does, immidiately switch your android device to airplane mode.
3. Spam the room with messages from another client, like 50 or so.
4. Turn off airplane mode and load Element.

If all is well, then the message-sending request succeeded, but the /sync didn't get to "catch" the message. And so the subsequent sync doesn't get the message echoed back (because it truncates when more than X messages were sent in the room since last time). That's my hypothesis, anyways.

[HammyHavoc]

Addendum to @ShadowJonathan's reproduction re slow network connections could also occur when the server is hammered, e.g. whilst updating containers, running maintenance tasks like backups etc.

[spdp-dev]

Hi. Just to add that I am experiencing this issue with some photos I had sent over a week ago.

I sent approx 20 photos over a weak mobile network signal to the recipient, and these photos seem to repeat at the bottom of the room.

I've had conversation with them since on both Element Android and Element Web. The issue persists on the Android client.

I have not yet tried to remedy the situation. So please let me know if there's any log or such that may be of help to debug.

[vranki]

I was asked to report here. Some of my findings:

• It is likely that poor network connectivity can trigger this issue. I have seen it most often in basement where WiFi reception is poor and phone may switch to 4G randomly. My hypothesis is that If this happens when sending message, the message may get stuck.
• Our homeserver has no workers in use, so this is NOT caused by worker bug.

[reivilibre]

I can also attest to having seen this on a monolith Synapse, so this is separate to the issue caused by workers.

I often use my phone in places with dodgy connection, so I would agree that this seems like it could be related. (If I was somewhere stable, I'd probably be on my laptop.)

I also have a superstitious feeling that it seemed to happen more frequently when I send an event whilst waiting for Element Android to do its first sync (or whatever it's doing whilst it's catching-up after being disconnected for a while), but maybe this is because this coincides more frequently with me being on dodgy connections (out and about).

[ShadowJonathan]

I also have a superstitious feeling that it seemed to happen more frequently when I send an event whilst waiting for Element Android to do its first sync

No you'd be mostly correct then, because it's possible events aren't acknowledged in the subsequent sync, and skipped in the next, because the delay between requesting the first sync, and then the second, is enough for your event to "fall through the cracks". With my hypothesis, anyway.

[ouchadam]

I've been able to reproduce this issue (kind of~) with the following methods...

• Force stop the app whilst messages are pending
• Programmatically force the task executors to cancel whilst in progress (cancellations don't clean up the local echos)

Everything else I've tried ends up with either a failed message error which supports retries or the message correctly sending by itself later on.

Unexpected thread cancellations could be the cause but I've been unable to trigger them in real situations.

The sync chunks theory is interesting, although removing the room sync clean up code still allows the pending messages to be removed... 🤔

[bmarty]

Fixed in Element Android 1.3.16