It's likely that there's some sort of error happening, preventing the app from starting up. We need the specific error message.

There are three things you can try in this situation to help us help you:

• Go to View -> Toggle Developer Tools to see if there are any errors in the DevTools Console window
• Open Command Prompt and navigate to C:\Users\<YourUsername>\AppData\Local\Programs\Signal and run the application from there. You may see an error printed to the console.
• Zip up C:\Users\<YourUsername>\AppData\Roaming\Signal\logs and send it to support@signal.org

Same problem here

Platform Info

Signal Version:

1.23.2

Operating System:

OSX 10.10.5

I sent you the log zip

Same problem here, Windows 8.1. Not sure which version because apart from "Quit Signal" and the various web links under "Help" none of the menu items work, but the signal.exe binary claims a file version of 1.24.1.0. Selecting "Quit Signal" leaves a suspended process that has to be killed via Task Manager. Running from the command line produces as last entry:

{"name":"log","hostname":"XXXXXXXXXX","pid":XXXX,"level":30,"msg":"config/set: Saving ephemeral config to disk","time":"2019-05-14T08:05:26.292Z","v":0}

Selecting "Quit Signal" hangs after:

{"name":"log","hostname":"XXXXXXXXXX","pid":XXXX,"level":30,"msg":"requestShutdown:Requesting close of mainWindow...","time":"2019-05-14T08:06:27.427Z","v":0}

requiring a manual kill of the process via task manager.

@fencepost-error We'll need the full log to track down what's going on. You can choose View -> Toggle Developer Tools to see what error is preventing the app window from rendering.

@scottnonnenberg-signal See my original post, the entire UI is unresponsive apart from "Quit Signal" and the web links nothing works, in that it's possible to select the various menu items but they do nothing.

@fencepost-error Failing that, there are two things to be done:

• start it from the command line, and capture the things that don't make it to our log (AppData/Local/Programs/Signal)
• pull everything from our user data logs folder, send that to support@signal.org (AppData/Roaming/Signal)

Ah, it's OK now, in the meantime I reinstalled Signal and rebooted and it works again.

I've just encountered this issue starting today without performing any app updates or changes. The following is what I was able to capture.

Platform Info

Signal Version: 1.25.3
Operating System: Windows 7
Linked Device Version: 4.41.5

Other troubleshooting info: (following the advice of this thread)

• Opening the dev tools menu via View -> Toggle Developer Tools causes the following to appear: "DevTools was disconnected from the page. Once page is reloaded, DevTools will automatically reconnect."
• Opening signal via the command line generates no errors. A case of log output is found below.
• Closing signal seems to require killing the process after using the File -> Quit Signal menu option, as @fencepost-error mentioned.
• I've sent a zip file containing the contents of my log directory to support@signal.org as requested.

$ ~/AppData/Local/Programs/signal-desktop/Signal.exe
Set Windows Application User Model ID (AUMID) { appUserModelId: 'org.whispersystems.signal-desktop' }

NODE_ENV production

NODE_CONFIG_DIR C:\Users\Nightfirecat\AppData\Local\Programs\signal-desktop\resources\app.asar\config

NODE_CONFIG {}

ALLOW_CONFIG_MUTATIONS undefined

HOSTNAME undefined

NODE_APP_INSTANCE undefined

SUPPRESS_NO_CONFIG_WARNING undefined

userData: C:\Users\Nightfirecat\AppData\Roaming\Signal

config/get: Successfully read user config file

config/get: Successfully read ephemeral config file

making app single instance

{"name":"log","hostname":"Jacques","pid":8300,"level":30,"msg":"app ready","time":"2019-07-20T21:06:24.638Z","v":0}

{"name":"log","hostname":"Jacques","pid":8300,"level":30,"msg":"starting version 1.25.3","time":"2019-07-20T21:06:24.639Z","v":0}

{"name":"log","hostname":"Jacques","pid":8300,"level":30,"msg":"updateSchema: Current schema version: 15; Most recent schema version: 15; SQLite version: 3.20.1; SQLCipher version: 3.4.2;","time":"2019-07-20T21:06:24.648Z","v":0}

{"name":"log","hostname":"Jacques","pid":8300,"level":30,"msg":"Initializing BrowserWindow config: {"show":true,"width":788,"height":598,"minWidth":640,"minHeight":550,"autoHideMenuBar":false,"backgroundColor":"#2090EA","webPreferences":{"nodeIntegration":false,"nodeIntegrationInWorker":false,"contextIsolation":false,"preload":"C:\\Users\\Nightfirecat\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\signal-desktop\\resources\\app.asar\\preload.js","nativeWindowOpen":true},"icon":"C:\\Users\\Nightfirecat\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\signal-desktop\\resources\\app.asar\\images\\icon_256.png","maximized":false,"x":2131,"y":213}","time":"2019-07-20T21:06:24.653Z","v":0}

{"name":"log","hostname":"Jacques","pid":8300,"level":30,"msg":"Using OS-level spell check API with locale C.UTF-8","time":"2019-07-20T21:06:25.823Z","v":0}

{"name":"log","hostname":"Jacques","pid":8300,"level":30,"msg":"pre-main prep time: 1 ms","time":"2019-07-20T21:06:26.003Z","v":0}

{"name":"log","hostname":"Jacques","pid":8300,"level":30,"msg":"Build expires:  2019-09-26T17:14:14.000Z","time":"2019-07-20T21:06:26.024Z","v":0}

{"name":"log","hostname":"Jacques","pid":8300,"level":30,"msg":"Preloading emoji images","time":"2019-07-20T21:06:26.042Z","v":0}

{"name":"log","hostname":"Jacques","pid":8300,"level":30,"msg":"background page reloaded","time":"2019-07-20T21:06:26.049Z","v":0}

{"name":"log","hostname":"Jacques","pid":8300,"level":30,"msg":"environment: production","time":"2019-07-20T21:06:26.049Z","v":0}

{"name":"log","hostname":"Jacques","pid":8300,"level":30,"msg":"close event {"shouldQuit":false}","time":"2019-07-20T21:09:28.485Z","v":0}

{"name":"log","hostname":"Jacques","pid":8300,"level":30,"msg":"requestShutdown: Requesting close of mainWindow...","time":"2019-07-20T21:09:28.488Z","v":0}

Edit: Strangely, after restarting my computer, Signal opens without issue now.

This still happens to me regularly...

Signal Version: 1.26.2
OS: ubuntu 19.04 with KDE

It usually happens after I resume the laptop from sleep... After that the app stays blue and won't even quit (either by using the right click on the tray icon or by doing File > Quit Signal), I have to kill it and start again.

I've been getting it again as well. Usually a reboot fixes it, but it's a pain to have to reboot just to be able to use Signal. For me it's not a resume from sleep but the first time it's started, I get the solid blue screen and and an unresponsive app.

To the devs: I didn't send the debug info from last time because I thought the problem had resolved itself, when it crops up again I'll get another lot of debug info.

Please consider trying the beta - it's built on a newer version of Electron by two major versions. Maybe this issue has been fixed in that version of Electron? https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop#install-the-beta

@scottnonnenberg-signal I tested it with the current beta (v1.28.0-beta.5) that you just released and it still doesn't work.
It doesn't even look like an Electron bug but rather like a traditional logical bug for me (but I have no knowledge of the Signal client anyway 😉).

It may be worth noting that that it still starts with the regular loading screen with the loading animation and the amount of messages that are loaded.
And sometimes the expected elements (like the contact roaster) are visible for a very short moment (less than a second) but then it switches to the blue screen.

And I'm not sure whether it's related to the blue screen but sometimes I also have to kill Signal to get it closed, because it won't quit by it's own (it stays at requestShutdown: Requesting close of mainWindow... but I have the feeling this is another issue).

Can you please tell which information is still needed? Because this issue contains log files and descriptions as someone would expect.
Or could you just remove the Need information label in case nothing is missing anymore?

@alexanderadam We really need debug logs, the log from developer tools, even basics like the specific OS version you're on. The fact that you're running into an issue is good to know, but only those details are useful in helping us track down the cause.

Did @Nightfirecat not send everything already in July?

@alexanderadam You're on a vastly newer version of the app, and as far as I know on a different OS. Please let us decide whether a log is needed or not, and default to providing it.

You're on a vastly newer version of the app, and as far as I know on a different OS.

Sure, and so far this bug at least appeared on

• OSX 10.10.5
• Windows 7
• Windows 8.1
• Windows 10
• Ubuntu 19.04 with KDE.

And also on various Signal versions (1.23.2, 1.24.1, 1.25.3, 1.26.2, 1.28.0-beta.5).

Please let us decide whether a log is needed or not, and default to providing it.

I absolutely do. Please don't imply that I claimed otherwise. What I actually did was asking whether @Nightfirecat sent everything already.

Because if @Nightfirecat did, then it appears that the formerly provided log data wasn't processed anyway.

Thus it would be very helpful to know if something was wrong with the provided data so that other's won't make the same mistake (in case there was one).

@alexanderadam Please send your debug log, before those lines expire. Log entries only stick around for three days.

Secondly, you can help out by opening the developer tools when this happens (ideally before it happens?) and seeing if anything interesting shows up there, things which may not be in your debug log.

Lastly, you can also help by providing a high-level summary of when it seems to happen - does it go away with a reboot, like stated above? Does it always happen? Does it come in waves?

you can help out by opening the developer tools when this happens (ideally before it happens?)

Is it possible to directly open Signal desktop with developer tools opened?

Lastly, you can also help by providing a high-level summary of when it seems to happen

FROM bitnami/minideb:latest

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-suggests --no-install-recommends iputils-ping \
        curl gnupg2 apt-transport-https ca-certificates libx11-xcb1 libasound2 libgtk-3-0 \
  && curl -s https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt/keys.asc > signal-repo.key \
  && apt-key add signal-repo.key \
  && echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt xenial main" > \
    /etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-xenial.list \
  && apt-get update \
  && apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y signal-desktop

ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/local/bin/signal-desktop"]

does it go away with a reboot

No, not within the Docker container. Once the bug appears, it stays there.
It depends. Sometimes it will, sometimes it wont. Clearing the Signal Desktop user data and pairing again always works, however.

Does it always happen?

Yes, once the bug appears, it stays and comes every time I start Signal Desktop (until a restart or at least clearing of the user data).

Does it come in waves?

I'm not sure what this means. It's a static blue screen that comes up when starting Signal desktop.

Is it possible to directly open Signal desktop with developer tools opened?

It would require rebuilding the app. But you can use the keyboard shortcut to open it quickly after starting up.

My guess about this issue is that it's Electron having problems with high memory usage, or some sort of high resource usage like that, and it essentially stops working. We encountered this a couple months ago on Linux specifically when we tried to cache too many images on startup. We slowed that caching down, and it seemed to fix it. We took that caching out entirely in v1.28, so I'm particularly surprised to see this still happening.

You asked about previous logs - no log has included any kind of smoking gun thus far. Just an indication that our code has perhaps stopped running in our renderer process. So perhaps we need to go a level deeper and get more metrics about the running process when this happens. What files it's accessing (for example with strace), how much CPU/memory it's using, etc.

Scott, I have had the same issue with my signal desktop and have tried the last three releases and its still stuck on the blue screen. Is there something yall figured out that fixed the blue screen issue?

@car110 I think our best bet is for you to give us your logs straight from disk, and then you can remove all local data for the app and try again starting from scratch.

okay I will do that, who do I sent them to?

You can either provide the logs here, or send them to support@signal.org.

I am seeing this issue on Signal v1.30.0 on Windows 10 1909 18363.592. App seems to start up, shows the loading screen, then the conversations, for a while it is usable and then blanks after clicking around a bit, showing only a blue screen. View > Debug log does nothing (it works only while the app itself is working) and the developer tools just say "DevTools was disconnected from the page". It looks just like the screenshots above. Trying to open File > Preferences while crashed also brings up nothing but a completely blue square without any toolbars or window borders.

I tried uninstalling signal desktop, manually removing AppData\Local\signal-desktop-updater, downloading signal-desktop-win-1.30.0.exe and installing it, re-validating with the QR code and it seems to have resolved the issue for now.

I had the same problem as well, with 1.30.0 on Windows 10. Haven't seen it for awhile, but it's come back again, required a restart of Windows to get past the unresponsive blue screen.

@lgrn5 @fencepost-error Anything you can provide here would be valuable - is Signal Desktop using a lot of RAM or CPU time when this blue screen happens? What might be different on your Windows machine between restarts - available RAM? Is the set of other apps running changing when you restart?

Nothing I can notice, CPU use is normal, about 1%, memory use normal, no unusual or additional apps running.

From what I could see when I checked, the process seemed more or less dead. No CPU activity or anything else standing out. Also, for me, I have no reason to believe a restart resolved the issue since I reinstalled the whole application.

From what I could see when I checked, the process seemed more or less dead. No CPU activity or anything else standing out.

Also in my case Signal Desktop on Linux never used much CPU or RAM when it came to the blue screen but it's definitely still working in the background and able to receive messages etc.
I'm sure about that because I'm reading the Signal Desktop database with an external tool and new messages appear.

@kenpowers-signal With LC_ALL, the application interface remains in pt_PT, though spends some time first on 'Optimising application...' (in Portuguese) before going to the message list and 'Bem-vindo ao Signal'.

We've released v1.32.1-beta.1 and v1.32.1 which should address the blue screens people have been seeing on Linux in some configurations. Unfortunately, it means that non-english spell check has been disabled for now. Let us know how it works for you!

@scottnonnenberg-signal Wonderful, those updates resolved the issue on both release and beta. 😄

I've tried a few combinations, so I'm running the v1.32.1-beta.1 , the behaviour I get is similar to what that environment would produce with choromium-browser (I know its using electron its not using chromioum), that is, using chromioum, without the --ignore-gpu-blacklist and my current usage which utilizes electron, both produce a white screen, where clicking on works, selecting and copying text works and gets it to clipboard, but nothing is visible.

what works with chromium is not working with signal/electron!!

I've tried adding and removing combinations of flags --disable-gpu --disable-software-rasterizer --no-sandbox --enable-gup --ignore-gpu-blacklist but it still gives me the same output. also LANG and LC_ALL variables...

strace consistantly fails to open fd numbered 35 and 47, they seem to be sockets (I'm running it inside docker)

I've tried to reduce the case to the following; the last setup uses the following (DockerFile):
FROM ubuntu
RUN apt-get update
ADD https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt/keys.asc /root/signal-key.asc
ADD signal-xenial.list /root/signal-xenial.list
RUN apt-get install -y gnupg apt-transport-https libasound2 ca-certificates libx11-xcb1 libcanberra-gtk-module libcanberra-gtk3-module xtrace
RUN apt-get upgrade -y
RUN apt-key add /root/signal-key.asc
RUN cp /root/signal-xenial.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-xenial.list
RUN apt-get update

RUN apt-get install -y signal-desktop-beta

CMD signal-desktop-beta --verbose --enable-logging --no-sandbox

and I run it using

docker run --rm -e DISPLAY=DOCKER_INTERFACE_IP:0 IMAGE_NAME

I also enable X listening and allow connectoin (for testing) from everywhere using:

xhost +

and I get:

Set Windows Application User Model ID (AUMID) { appUserModelId: 'org.whispersystems.signal-desktop-beta' }
NODE_ENV production
NODE_CONFIG_DIR /opt/Signal Beta/resources/app.asar/config
NODE_CONFIG {}
ALLOW_CONFIG_MUTATIONS undefined
HOSTNAME undefined
NODE_APP_INSTANCE undefined
SUPPRESS_NO_CONFIG_WARNING undefined
SIGNAL_ENABLE_HTTP undefined
userData: /root/.config/Signal Beta
config/get: Did not find user config file, cache is now empty object
x-attr dependncy did not load successfully
config/get: Did not find ephemeral config file, cache is now empty object
LaunchProcess: failed to execvp:
xdg-settings
[6:0313/215149.707735:ERROR:bus.cc(393)] Failed to connect to the bus: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such file or directory
[29:0313/215149.743700:ERROR:gl_implementation.cc(277)] Failed to load libGL.so.1: libGL.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[29:0313/215149.747371:ERROR:viz_main_impl.cc(161)] Exiting GPU process due to errors during initialization
[6:0313/215150.319560:ERROR:bus.cc(393)] Failed to connect to the bus: Could not parse server address: Unknown address type (examples of valid types are "tcp" and on UNIX "unix")
[6:0313/215150.347259:ERROR:bus.cc(393)] Failed to connect to the bus: Could not parse server address: Unknown address type (examples of valid types are "tcp" and on UNIX "unix")
[42:0313/215150.417905:WARNING:x11_util.cc(1443)] X error received: serial 199, error_code 1 (BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)), request_code 130, minor_code 1 (X_ShmAttach)
[42:0313/215150.418694:WARNING:x11_util.cc(1443)] X error received: serial 200, error_code 1 (BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)), request_code 130, minor_code 1 (X_ShmAttach)
[42:0313/215150.420122:WARNING:x11_util.cc(1443)] X error received: serial 201, error_code 1 (BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)), request_code 130, minor_code 3 (X_ShmPutImage)
[42:0313/215150.433797:WARNING:x11_util.cc(1443)] X error received: serial 214, error_code 1 (BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)), request_code 130, minor_code 3 (X_ShmPutImage)
(node:57) Electron: Loading non-context-aware native module in renderer: '/tmp/.org.chromium.Chromium.JYkzFg'. This is deprecated, see electron/electron#18397.
(node:57) Electron: Loading non-context-aware native module in renderer: '/tmp/.org.chromium.Chromium.JYkzFg'. This is deprecated, see electron/electron#18397.
[6:0313/215152.344930:WARNING:quota_manager.cc(1704)] No storage quota provided in QuotaSettings.
[6:0313/215152.603225:ERROR:bus.cc(393)] Failed to connect to the bus: Could not parse server address: Unknown address type (examples of valid types are "tcp" and on UNIX "unix")
[42:0313/215214.590928:WARNING:x11_util.cc(1443)] X error received: serial 220, error_code 1 (BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)), request_code 130, minor_code 2 (X_ShmDetach)
[42:0313/215214.591468:WARNING:x11_util.cc(1443)] X error received: serial 221, error_code 1 (BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)), request_code 130, minor_code 2 (X_ShmDetach)

and the white screen.

I can confirm chromioum eventually worked with options that are not working with signal/electron, local variables are not having any affect.

I've manually defined the version to be used to be 1.31.0 in my setup; and added --disable-dev-shm-usage; this seems to get me beyound the blue screen issue, yet the latest 1.32 version is giving me the "white screen issue" !

I can confirm the new "white screen issue" within Docker. Should we create a new issue for that?

@alexanderadam Yes, it is a new issue. I'm closing this one now.

This is not fixed, please reopen ASAP, signal is very unreliable right now: https://i.imgur.com/vSbelcp.png

version window shows, preferences also renders blue. On loading, sometimes the contact list and messages show for a fraction of a second, then everything turns blue.

I suspect that this might be caused by killing the app (e.g. during crash, disk space, reboot while the app is running). Does not seem to be related to updates.

I'm on Archlinux:

$ pacman -Qi signal-desktop
Name            : signal-desktop
Version         : 1.34.3-1

$ pacman -Qi electron 
Name            : electron
Version         : 9.0.5-1

Deleting .config/Signal helps, but then you need to reconnect...

--disable-software-rasterizer or --disable-dev-shm-usage or env LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8 signal-desktop doesn't help.

Electron snippet above shows a window with text/content that looks valid. Same with /usr/bin/electron.

Nothing in the terminal looks suspicious, but it seems there's personal data there, so can't post. Last lines:

{"name":"log","hostname":"hostname","pid":19469,"level":30,"time":"2020-07-13T13:40:04.395Z","msg":"got request PUT /api/v1/queue/empty","v":0}
{"name":"log","hostname":"hostname","pid":19469,"level":30,"time":"2020-07-13T13:40:04.397Z","msg":"MessageReceiver: finished processing messages after 'empty', now waiting for application","v":0}
{"name":"log","hostname":"hostname","pid":19469,"level":30,"time":"2020-07-13T13:40:04.397Z","msg":"MessageReceiver: emitting 'empty' event","v":0}
{"name":"log","hostname":"hostname","pid":19469,"level":30,"msg":"updater/start: Updates disabled - not starting new version checks","time":"2020-07-13T13:40:04.401Z","v":0}

Are there any other issues related to this? The issue tracker is so unsorted...

We haven't upgraded to Electron 9 yet. You'll need to follow up with your Signal Desktop packager.

But it definitely works when you delete .config/Signal and reconnect...

In Docker or Podman container, to solve the white screen issue, you can start signal desktop: signal-desktop --no-sandbox --use-gl=swiftshader.
This is because Signal developers use chrome/chromium libraries, python, electron, etc. instead native compiled languages and its own libraries. This is why the Signal desktop size is huge. It could be 10%.

Competent developers are needed.

In case anybody else have this problem and have spent more than one day trying to find a solution for this; the solution suggested by @mvasi90 works for me.

Something worth trying: File > Quit, then try again. I suspect the issue comes up every time we use the "X" button to close the desktop application. It might be a problem with Atom, Ultron, or whatever the heck the framework for Signal is called. I believe Signal is not the culprit here, but the framework used to port it to desktop.

I have it after an update to Signal Desktop 5.28.0 on Mac OS 10.11.6
Not yet tried reboot. Quit doesnt work, have to kill Signal Desktop. I have no Developer Tools in View menu and dont know where to find the log on Mac.
My first fear is always, that now it happened, OS 10.11 is not anymore supported, but here I downloaded Signal again from the v5.28 Download page and copied it over the old Signal Desktop and voila it worked again :)

2022-02-12 now I had an update again and again the blue screen in Signal. Downloaded the actual version 5.31.1 from the Signal's Download Page and it worked again.

I have the same issue, but it looks like I've got a different problem, here is my logging:

I'm on Windows 10.
Well, actually, I do not see anything, expect a few processes in my Task Manager. When I start the Signal process again, it will show the blue window.

@SLG Two questions:

1. Are you ever able to get Signal Desktop to start?
2. It looks like you're having GPU errors. Could you try running Signal Desktop with the --disable-gpu flag?

It used to work, but since I think 5.30, or maybe 5.29 or something it was broken.
The --disable-gpu flag does seem to help! It still logs a bit about the GPU, but I do see my main window again!

A future update of Signal Desktop will upgrade Electron, which we hope will fix this issue. Until then, the --disable-gpu flag should help.

now on v. 5.32, the trick is to use --in-process-gpu :/

@SLG
...
2. It looks like you're having GPU errors. Could you try running Signal Desktop with the --disable-gpu flag?

How can I run that flag on Mac OS 10.11?

@francwalter On macOS, you can open the Terminal app, then run this:

/Applications/Signal.app/Contents/MacOS/Signal --in-process-gpu

This might be a little different if you're running beta. You can also try --disable-gpu to see if that helps.

Since about two updates it works again on my Mac OS 10.11.6
Something has changed too: now I have a progress bar about downloading the update, after the download the update doesnt make any blue screen anymore 👍
Thanks for fixing it 👍