Signing in to Google account for Chrome sync fails

hal0thane

I looked for similar threads, but couldn't find one; apologies if this has already been reported. What I'm experiencing is this:

For some reason sync wasn't working in Chrome. It kept telling me I needed to sign in to my Google account. I kept trying to sign in, but it didn't recognize me regardless. Finally, it occurred to me what the problem was. When I was attempting to sign in (from chrome://preferences), Chrome pops up a window to ask for login info. I entered my Google email and password, but then when I attempt to submit it, 1Password (either the extension or Mini... not sure) would ask to save the login. In the process, the sign-in window goes away before it can fully sign me into my account.

The workaround is to disable the Chrome extension (from chrome://extensions) and close Mini before attempting to sign in to Google. However, I found that when I went back to chrome://extensions and re-enabled the extension, Chrome acted as though the extension wasn't even there, and I had to redownload it once again. A simple(?) fix would be to disable auto-saving for URLs that begin with chrome://, and probably other non-standard protocols.

Thanks, 1P team.

littlebobbytables

There should be a couple of options.

Adding an additional website to your google entry with the URL set to chrome://preferences may stop 1Password asking if you want to save. Also, in the dialog that 1Password pops up you should have the option of not asking if you wish to save for this URL, you could do that or pop into 1Password's preferences, head into the Browser section and manually add chrome://preferences yourself. 1Password can't handle wildcards yet so you can't easily exclude anything starting with chrome:// but then I'm guessing you only need it to ignore one or two URLs at most anyway.

What I can't easily do is test this myself - I'm not a big Google fan and I don't have any browser do any syncing. Hopefully one of these works though.

hal0thane

The option of adding chrome://preferences might work. It's worth trying. I read elsewhere that Chrome disallows extensions on chrome:// pages, but for some reason I still get the prompt to save the login. (Maybe the window it pops up is actually on google.com?) It doesn't matter, though, whether I tell the auto-save dialog to save or not; by that point, the login window has already been closed. Apparently, the login window goes away as soon as Chrome loses focus.

Thanks.

MikeT

Hi guys,

@hal0thane, thanks for taking the time to write what you went through, it really helps.

I entered my Google email and password, but then when I attempt to submit it, 1Password (either the extension or Mini... not sure) would ask to save the login.

The UI you see is all the same, it is powered by 1Password mini. When the 1Password extension needs to do something, it sends a command via a secure local connection to 1Password mini and 1Password mini pops up on top to obey the extension's command. :D

In the process, the sign-in window goes away before it can fully sign me into my account.

That's weird, I can't reproduce this. 1Password mini doesn't do anything in Chrome because it is opened outside of Chrome and it has all the data it needs already to save from the extension.

For me, if the login attempt fails, Chrome just redirects to an error page like this:

If the login was successful, Chrome closes the page right away anyway and takes me back to the Settings page where it all started, like this:

A simple(?) fix would be to disable auto-saving for URLs that begin with chrome://, and probably other non-standard protocols.

Note that 1Password lets you fill in your data on this page and people do use this, so we have no plans to disable it on chrome:// pages. In fact, people want 1Password to save the data they've entered inside the browser and to have it work differently on a different URI isn't a solution here.

The workaround is to disable the Chrome extension (from chrome://extensions) and close Mini before attempting to sign in to Google. However, I found that when I went back to chrome://extensions and re-enabled the extension, Chrome acted as though the extension wasn't even there, and I had to redownload it once again.

Is it possible because of a Chrome sync that just occurs as soon as you're logged in? If you enable the chrome extension sync, it may have deleted any extensions that didn't exist in the previous sync sessions.

hal0thane

Thanks for responding, Mike. I wonder whether the login is being handled differently in different versions of Chrome. I'm currently using version 38.0.2125.101 beta. I did get signed in (after disabling the extension/Mini), but before that, when I pressed the button in chrome://settings to connect my Google account, the login page opened in a pop-up. The problem I'm describing is that the save login dialog is stealing focus away from Chrome, which in turn closes that pop-up. I don't know why Chrome closes the window when it loses focus, but it does apparently.

I don't know what you might be able to do to improve this, and probably nothing unless Google decides to stop closing that login window when Chrome loses focus, but I at least wanted to make you guys aware of it and document it here for anyone else who runs into that problem.

I believe that Chrome disables extensions for chrome:// URLs, or at least used to. If that's true, I don't understand why it's asking me to save the login in the first place.

MikeT

HI @hal0thane,

At the time, I was testing the Chrome stable version, 37.0.2062.124.

but before that, when I pressed the button in chrome://settings to connect my Google account, the login page opened in a pop-up. The problem I'm describing is that the save login dialog is stealing focus away from Chrome, which in turn closes that pop-up.

I see the problem now when you said pop-up because there is no such popup in the current stable version. When I switched to Canary, it shows up as a pop-up now when you click on the avatar on top right. Now, I see what you're seeing.

Unfortunately, I don't think it has to do with chrome:// page because it is showing up as a popup on top of the current page. When I told 1Password to save it, here's what the data shows:

You probably saw chrome:// because you may have pressed Sign in to Chrome button, which show the pop-up on top of chrome://. If you click on the avatar on top right of Chrome to sign in while you're on this forum, you'll see it is saved as a Login item for the forum while Google's SIgn-In page is saved as a second website like in the screenshot above.

I'll file a bug report to see if we can work around it by blocking accounts.google.com/EmbeddedSignIn or delay the popup, so it doesn't shift the focus away.

ref: OPX-653

hal0thane

Thanks Mike. Glad you were able to reproduce it. I see what you're saying about it not actually being on a chrome:// page. I can foresee this being a common problem when/if the pop-up version is integrated into Chrome's stable branch.

Megan

Hi @hal0thane,

Thanks so much for bringing this to our attention! You're right, what's in beta now will be coming to stable soon ... we'll do what we can to improve behaviour here. :)

hal0thane

Glad that I could catch it before more customers started to experience it. Thanks :smile:

Jasper

On behalf of Mike and Megan, you're welcome! :)