Studio still closes for updates. It's still frustrating

spliceosome · December 5, 2019, 2:32am

This is extremely ridiculeous. I didn’t know about this “feature” until my Studio decided to close on me in the middle of scrpting a new feature (closing 3 studio windows without ever consulting me).

This is especially problematic when it takes about 5 attempts for the Studio update to actually succeed.

Small quality of user experience problems like this are widespread on Roblox, and they are the most salient factor that is driving me towards other game platforms/engines going forward. I am not going to waste my time dealing with minor but extremely annoying issues like this on a regular basis.

Fortunately, I did not lose any significant amount of work, but it sounds like I’m one of the lucky ones.

nsgriff · December 6, 2019, 5:07am

We have identified a quick solution for this problem. Due to it being end of year and we are at code freeze (with 1 update left), we will be shipping this early next year. Thank you for the replies, and keep them coming.

Tomarty · January 15, 2020, 8:54pm

I ignored the update this morning because I was working on something important. Now it’s opening dozens of new studio instances that it had queued up:

I should just take Wednesdays off

Subcritical_alt · January 24, 2020, 7:28pm

We have just shipped a beta feature that allows you to try out new update behavior which should hopefully address most of the grievances posted here.

This is a multipart change that currently only has any effect on Windows. When we finish support for Mac, it will be available through the same beta feature. If you’re on Mac, you can go ahead and enable the beta feature if you want to automatically opt-in to the feature once it’s live on Mac.

The exact breakdown between the new / old behavior is:

Old

When a new Studio instance is opened and an update is available, Studio immediately begins to update. The new instance never finishes opening, preventing you from opening any new instances (test servers, other places in the game, etc) until Studio is updated, and the updater attempts to close all places to update Studio. (Because of a bug with the updater, sometimes it would force-kill Studio instead of prompting the user to close all places. Team Create instances would always immediately shut down)

If you did not update Studio for 22 hours after an update became available, the updater would automatically pop up and update Studio, even if you were in a fullscreen game.

New

Studio will only ever automatically update if it is being launched for the first time with no existing instances opened, as it is the only point in which we can shut down for update without losing work. If you open a Studio instance while an update is available now, we will honor your request to open that instance, prompting you with a cancellable dialog asking if you want to shut down & update, instead of preventing the new instance from being opened. If you leave Studio open for 48 hours after an update becomes available, you will receive the same cancellable dialog. It will only pop up if you are using that instance of Studio (so never while you’re using a fullscreen game, browsing the internet, etc). You will never receive this dialog when opening test servers / detatched play solo.

If you cancel the dialog, however, it will continue to pop up once an hour from then on. If the dialog is excessively annoying, please provide feedback so we can continue to look into the issue. The recurring dialog allowed us to release these changes sooner rather than later since it’s annoying enough that we didn’t have to investigate the impact of an excessive increase in old versions, but we are open to changing it. Even with the spammy dialog though, the new behavior should be all-around better (you can actually use Studio longer than 22 hours / opening a new instance now)

NOTE: This change only applies to Studio. If you launch Studio via RobloxStudioBetaLauncher.exe (what usually gets pinned to the start menu / taskbar / desktop), it will still try to forcefully shut down all instances to update. If you are opening from Studio (e.g. test server, Game Explorer, File > Open From Roblox) you’re fine, but otherwise use RobloxStudioBeta.exe or switch to Studio and File > Open From Roblox.

LMH_Hutch · June 11, 2020, 3:48am

The beta feature is great but most of the time I’m opening places from the launcher, not from a specific file. 99% of the time the beta feature does nothing to prevent the shutdown issue. It is still a huge problem.

Today I was working and needed to open a TC to get some items. I clicked the studio launcher and was shown the “Shutting down Roblox Studio” followed by:

A window that doesn’t tell me an update is available, just that my places need to close and I may lose work that isn’t saved. So I go to get my place ready to save only to find:

(my place no longer accessible)

Today I did lose work that wasn’t saved and I had no way to actually go about saving it other than trusting a dialog with that task. I lost the ability to clean up my place into a savable state and lost all of my undo history for all the changes I was making.

All because I wanted to get a model from a team create.

This is still a huge issue that occurs every update day. The beta feature helps alleviate a tiny amount of friction in the update process but at the end of the day but it is far from solving the main issue.

I just want to be told “An update is available, please close all your open studio windows” when I try and open a new window. Show me banner notifications in studio if I’m using an outdated version.

Just let me close down and update when I’m ready, stop closing my studio windows.

bizbot19 · June 24, 2020, 11:22pm

After trying out the beta feature for Safe Studio Update for two weeks, I can safely say that it does not resolve the issues I have with Studio’s automatic updates.

The issue described here still occurs regardless of the beta build. The bottom-line for me is that if I am working I do not want my currently open places to close without prompting me. Ever. Period.

nsgriff · June 24, 2020, 11:23pm

Once again, thank you for the continued feedback everyone. We are designing improved workflows for this. Keep it coming!

LMH_Hutch · August 27, 2020, 9:02pm

This is still a very annoying UX issue. Opening studio via the launcher application is a death sentence for any open studio window. Yes I have the beta enabled, it does not help with this problem.

The updating and shutdown process stalls here:

but it’s a totally useless prompt since my studio windows are now just:

Please stop closing all my studio windows. Just block new ones from opening and prompt a dialog box that says “A new version of studio is available, please close all studio windows and try again”.

Saved or not there is nothing friendly about auto shutting down studio windows for updates. Trying to open a new window should never result in all of my windows closing.

Alkan · November 5, 2020, 6:47pm

My studio just shut itself down mid-development for an update. The unsaved files asked me to save, but why in the world would you shut down stuff I’m actively working on for an update? Numerous studios just ended themselves out of the blue for a studio update. I didn’t even open anything to prompt this update.

Disrespectly · November 5, 2020, 7:14pm

I can vouch that this is still an ongoing issue, and is very disruptive to my own development workflow-- a sudden closing of all my studio tabs is annoying and counter-productive.

LMH_Hutch · November 5, 2020, 9:33pm

I clicked the the studio launcher so I could open up a team create place. I was greeted with:

As soon as the launcher opened, my place froze and I was shown “Shutting down Roblox Studio”.

Once the shutting down window went away I was greeted with:

I had no chance to save anything. I had no chance to recovery anything. The “Shutting down” window (if it even shows up at all) passes by so fast that by the time you realize what’s happening it’s probably to late to click Cancel.

“OK” and “Cancel” are functionally the same action since the place is already gone by the time the prompt shows up. The entire process is still incredibly frustrating.

Please just block the studio launcher from opening new windows. Stop closing studio windows for updates.

LMH_Hutch · November 18, 2020, 8:24pm

Today I lost the microprofiler info I have been looking for while hunting down some bugs. Not because of any actions I did with that data but because I made the mistake of thinking opening a new studio window to isolate a test was going to be fine on an update day. I’ll be spending the rest of my day hopefully trying to repro that situation again and drilling “pause and dump the MP” into my muscle memory for the foreseeable future.

This time I reacted quick enough to hit the “Cancel” button on the “Shutting down Roblox Studio” window only to have the updater window go away and then have my studio window freeze up and never responded again. Despite there being 2 cancel buttons during this shutdown process neither of them work and once it’s start everything you had open will be gone with no recovery opportunity.

This is consistently a problem week after week. This is a broken UX problem, and potentially even a functionality broken problem (the cancel buttons don’t cancel anything). There is nothing developer friendly about closing our studio windows for updates, please let us close for updates manually.

PeZsmistic · November 19, 2020, 12:27am

There is a beta feature that partially stops this from happening, but it only applies under very specific launch conditions. Please see this feature request:

ZeezyRed · February 17, 2021, 11:03pm

Still happening to this day. How many times have they “fixed” this problem?

Really awesome.

Note : it warned for the Baseplate I literally just opened but closed me out of 30 minutes of unsaved scripting work without notice. Really has it’s priorities straight doesn’t it.

Note 2 : Not much of a warning if you consider the only option is “shut down now”. Why can’t I just save my work first and then shut down for the update? Why update at all? Why does it force me out of studio just because I needed to open up a baseplate to test something?

RuizuKun_Dev · March 10, 2021, 5:17pm

This just happened to me and I would have lost a lot of work if I wasn’t careful.

I was in Teamcreate and I don’t recall any warnings showing up, Studio just vanished.

It is truly sad and shameful, I feel terrible for those who lost their work due to this lack of User Experience consideration.

Please treat our work and time more seriously, it’s been a while since this Feature request has been made.

LMH_Hutch · April 9, 2021, 9:58pm

Multiple times for the past 3 days now studio has updated and every studio window I have open closes.

As a developer I should not have to scramble to save everything I have open once “Studio shutting down” starts going just so studio can update happen and I can re open all my places again. It’s especially infuriating if I have to do this multiple times a day.

Last night we did a test for our game. What should have been a 5 minute content sync up between team creates that were already open and one final publish turned into a 20 minute job because studio shut down to update two times in a row and I had to spend most of that time reconnecting to team creates and publishing and reopening place files to team creates.

This is not good user experience. Please just don’t let me open new studio windows if an update is available. Stop closing my studio windows.

RuizuKun_Dev · April 10, 2021, 10:33am

This might be potentially related to your issue

Chris0neilson0 · April 10, 2021, 3:18pm

There bug update:

ChadTheCreator · June 25, 2021, 6:43pm

I’ve recently been getting more frustrated with this aspect of Roblox development. I’m both surprised and disappointed to find that this has been an issue for so long and has been a devforum topic for almost 2 years and it hasn’t been changed or addressed in any way.

gillern · August 27, 2021, 2:17am

How is this still an issue? I tried opening a local file from the downloads bar in google chrome and all of my studio sessions just automatically closed without any warning or prompt, very frustrating!