Metamask-extension: Stuck on "connecting to network"

[mtcarmel1914]

description added by moderator 11/8

several users have reported their extension stuck on "connecting to Mainnet" or "connecting to network" when they're logged out and they click the extension.

via slack

have been getting infinite loading gif on startup.
when I unlock in mainnet it infinite loads, but if I open into rinkeby or kovan its fine and then I can change it over to mainnet. confimed this about 6 times in a row. it fixes it when I restart chrome 50% of the time.
Mojave 10.14 (18A391)
Google Chrome Version 70.0.3538.77 (Official Build) (64-bit)

the workaround is to turn the plugin off/on, and then make sure its not on mainnet when i type my password. then switch to mainnet. I also noticed that when i switch to a different browser tab while on mainnet it goes into infinite loading as well

[mtcarmel1914]

will not start! stuck on "connecting to network". How do I fix this issue?

[vincentserpoul]

I have the same.
I usually just switch to main network back to the network I wanted to connect to. It works for me as a temp workaround

[danfinlay]

That workaround works for most people.

This seems to happen to some users after some kind of network interruption, it seems to break our network connection and it isn't cleaned up well. We need to find a good way to reproduce this in order to fix this.

If anyone can describe what first caused this for them, it could help us fix it for good.

[danfinlay]

We need to handle provider errors better.

[danfinlay]

Partly related to #2552.

[danfinlay]

The usual workaround for this is to switch the provider (top left menu) and back again. There seems to be some case where we do not catch an infura error, and stop polling for provider connection. If we just catch around our provider connection polling, we should be able to fix this.

[et]

If anyone can describe what first caused this for them, it could help us fix it for good.

@danfinlay - I had Little Snitch blocking requests to infura. You could do the same by just blocking requests to infura in your /etc/hosts

0.0.0.0 api.infura.io

To reproduce:

• Block requests to infura
• Open metamask
• Observe the never ending spinner (this should have some kind of time out to inform the user)
• Allow requests to infura
• Open metamask
• Observe that the never ending spinner is still present. The only way to fix is to change the network.

[whymarrh]

Observe the never ending spinner (this should have some kind of time out to inform the user)

I believe this has been fixed with https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/pull/5893