Allow circumventing the new webview login prompt

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to log in to studio via the new webview prompt. Especially when issues arise that make this prompt unusable.

If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because it would make it possible to work around issues regarding the login process, without it being a complete disruption.

The big problem that separates this from most issues is that logging in to Studio is absolutely mandatory. It is a necessary first step, with no workarounds, no circumvention, no hackery. That is reasonable enough, many websites won’t let you use them if you’re not logged in. But if it fails, Studio becomes impossible to use, and it may not be in Roblox’s best interest to solve incredibly rare problems that users placed on themselves unknowingly or accidentally, let alone the fact that Roblox may not even be made aware of those extremely rare and atypical issues. A way to cut out the technical complexity in these cases, particularly regarding the new login prompt would be a live safer. (An emergency entrance :stuck_out_tongue:)


Currently, based on discussion from here, I would propose a mechanism to allow auto-prompting studio logins in the browser. A studio setting, or potentially even a fast flag would probably suffice, any sort of mechanism that could be controlled by a user (if you’re desperate enough).


I have a lot of additional info or support that may not necessarily be relevant, but I still think it is important to bring up and to emphasize.

Evidence of this problem being impactful in the past

This point of failure actually happens quite frequently on Roblox. Every time there is a big Roblox outage, people lose access to Studio, because Studio requires internet access and it needs to connect to Roblox, and you need to be able to log in, and to log in, the layers and layers and layers of technology and abstractions and complexity all need to just work.

That’s likely never going to change, it is a somewhat natural state for Studio to be in, but, it is certainly evidence that this technological footgun just sort of exists and is genuinely impactful to users on Roblox. Giving users half a way out so they can at least hold off can potentially save many users their source of income.

The web view implementation means that there is a much bigger surface area for things to go wrong for users in general. If a user has some exotic system configuration, perhaps their Microsoft Edge installation is corrupt, they will be unable to really do anything about it.

If I didn’t have a Windows install, I would be incapable of working right now. For some people, that could be their rent gone without notice.

Complete Linux/Wine disruption as a result of web view

Currently this effects me and quite a lot of people in an extremely disruptive way. I use Linux as my primary OS. Under Wine, this new web view implementation does not work correctly at all. There are unlikely to be solutions to this in the near future because of the quantity of moving pieces involved in getting the web view prompt to display. It is of course unreasonable to Roblox to go out of their way to fix an issue that relates to Wine when Roblox openly states that they won’t support Wine, so the most ideal compromise is one that generalizes.

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Hey @Hexcede we are discussing internally what we could do here, thanks for posting.

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:point_up_2:
I went through pain in the Grapejuice Discord(a program that automates Roblox with wine stuff) trying to find a fix.
In the end, I never found a reliable fix.

Currently, there is almost always a “stuck on login” help thread at the top of their help forum.
Sadly, they very rarely ever get to log in.

Here’s an example of a help post that I found just today.
image

I understand that Roblox does not officially support linux or wine, but come on!
This used to work fine and is a necessity for some users!

awesome to see that this is being acknowledged by Roblox!

Just to be extremely clear on expectations for now and in the future: we cannot take Linux/Wine into account as we make changes as it is not a supported platform. Any specific changes to unblock are courtesy fixes.

We cannot hold back specific changes or feature additions just because they block Linux users. Only supported platforms are taken into account w.r.t. compatibility. We currently do not have bandwidth to consider or test against Linux/Wine usage.

I recommend to support an existing feature request around having Linux as a supported platform for Studio.


(we are still discussing this internally, just a quick update on expectations)

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Yet you guys have no problem holding back bug fixes because they break support for platforms over 10 years old?

I’m sorry if this comes off-topic, but I think Roblox has a contradictory view on platform support. It makes absolutely zero sense to not even entertain the idea of touching Linux support yet still go out of the way to cater to a smaller and barely profitable market (i.e., GLES 2.0 Androids). Android is literally built on a Linux Distro!

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We already wait ~3 years for almost every single feature change to client or studio that has been requested on the forum. I’m skeptical Roblox has the bandwidth to support Linux right now.

It would be nice if Roblox could communicate the technical issues that are currently holding it back though.

Thought your response isn’t exactly what I wanted, I understand… :frowning:

Just happy to see that this has been officially acknowledged and is being discussed!

Now look at this penguin hooksmith.

He would LOVE to be supported by Roblox. (linux :3)

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This is not contradictory whatsoever. The devices mentioned are/were officially supported.

Feel free to support an existing feature request about Linux becoming an officially supported platform for Studio. This thread is not the place for this request.

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UPDATE

While Studio’s in-studio sign in does not work (due to webview 2) the Log in via Browser option partially works and it sounds like even works correctly on some people’s machines (not mine unfortunately).

Janky Workaround

This requires a bit of timing to do, but it’s not too difficult, and is at least a way to get into Studio. This is what I did to get in to Studio again.

  • Open Studio. You’ll be prompted to either Login via Browser or Login via Studio.
  • With a terminal window to the side, have the command ps -ef | grep winebrowser.exe in there ready to run. (To break apart this command, the ps -ef will list all processes (-e switch) in the standard format (-f switch), and then | grep winebrowser.exe will pipe that (indicated by the | symbol) to grep to find the processes with winebrowser.exe in them)
  • Click Login via Browser, and run that command once or a few times, so you can try and capture the winebrowser.exe process that gets launched (you can generally use the up arrow to select the previous command in the terminal). This might take some timing to do, since the process exits after a second or two.
  • You should see winebrowser.exe https://authorize.roblox.com/ followed by a bunch of tokens and gibberish and stuff. Just go to that URL in a browser (the full thing). My terminal just lets me right click and do Open Link, you might have to copy it. That’s the URL Roblox is trying to launch but on some systems (like mine) winebrowser.exe fails to actually do anything (normally it should launch it in your default browser).
  • Then you can log in there and Studio should get the memo a few seconds later.

No Login via Browser prompt

If you are seeing a black box (I was originally seeing this) or nothing, and just aren’t getting asked to pick login via browser or login via studio you need to rename or delete your Studio prefix folder, or clear the reg files in it and copy from a fresh prefix.

The reason this happens is because Studio has some value stored from before the update that is causing some broken prompt to try to be displayed instead of the Login via Browser prompt, I’m not really sure, I didn’t look into it too much.

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