Edge/Chrome Browser window opens a blank New Tab

Upgraded recently to Studio 2025.0.157, I’ve started seeing a new browser window open occasionally that looks like this:

Clicking the X to close it in the top right corner does nothing. I can’t get rid of it until I kill it in Task Manager.

You will also notice that the toolbar icon for it looks like the UiPath Browser Extension logo, not Chrome.

Has anyone else experienced this? Today it popped up during an unattended automation and caused it to fail (that’s where the screen grab comes from).

Hi @kevin.scott,

What happens when you manually open the chrome in this machine?

Does this tab open when chrome is opened manually as well?

Or is it something that happens only during process runs?

Regards
Sonali

When I open it manually with nothing else opens, nothing happens.

It opens sometimes when I have Studio open.

It doesn’t happen only during process runs, it happens during development occasionally as well.

I will start keeping closer track of when it opens and what’s happening when it does and report it in this thread.

Hi @kevin.scott,

Yes it would be helpful to identify the pattern for when it happens.

As of now, I think it’s something to do with current chrome settings or with certain actions that are making a tab pop out.

Also check below thread as well on chrome tabs suddenly popping out:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/oefq3m/clicking_on_tab_to_activate_it_jumps_out_as/?rdt=40740

As a workaround for now, you can consider using element exists activity to check if pop-up tab appeared in the screen. If yes, kill it before proceeding to next action. This will help to avoid process failures because of this tab popping out.

Regards
Sonali

@kevin.scott

Can you tell what are the use app/browser properties that you have set

Also try to play around them to see if that makes a difference

Cheers

It happened again this morning on Prod, but did not happen when I tried to recreate it in Dev.

This caused the process to fail, I assume because the focus moved to the new browser window.

Perhaps a compatibility issue with the browser extension? Current browser extension version is 24.10, which is the version that was applied when we did the upgrade of Studio to 2025.0.157

@kevin.scott,

To avoid process failures due to this pop-up, you can also add below activity in your code before where it is failing.

you can consider using element exists activity to check if pop-up tab appeared in the screen. If yes, kill it before proceeding to next action. This will help to avoid process failures because of this tab popping out.

Also, activating(using Activate activity) the actual window/browser where you wanna work also helps.

When you open the browser, before doing any activity in that browser, add below:

  1. Activate the browser by selecting some element on the browser where you want to perform your next steps.
  2. Also, you can include the element exists activity to check if the element you are trying to access on the browser exists, if yes, then proceed with typing/clicking or whatever tasks you have in your workflow.

Regards
Sonali

What I find interesting, and perhaps a clue to a root cause, is that the new window that’s opening doesn’t have any browser tabs. The tab and the window are one.

image

To avoid process failures due to this pop-up, you can also add below activity in your code before where it is failing.

you can consider using element exists activity to check if pop-up tab appeared in the screen. If yes, kill it before proceeding to next action. This will help to avoid process failures because of this tab popping out.

Also, activating(using Activate activity) the actual window/browser where you wanna work also helps.

When you open the browser, before doing any activity in that browser, add below:

  1. Activate the browser by selecting some element on the browser where you want to perform your next steps.
  2. Also, you can include the element exists activity to check if the element you are trying to access on the browser exists, if yes, then proceed with typing/clicking or whatever tasks you have in your workflow.

Regards
Sonali

I’ll give this a try as a workaround. When I click manually on the window I want, the extra window stays in the foreground, but perhaps the robot will see it differently.

For this, you can add Element exists activity to find if the extra window has appeared or not. If yes, kill that window before doing anything in the main window.

I opened a ticket with support and got this as a response. I hope it’s helpful to anyone else who encounters this!

Thank you for contacting UiPath Support. My name is Marian and I am the Support Engineer who will be working on your support request. You can reach me by replying to this email.

From what we understand, your automation it is failing because a new browser it is opening without any tags which you cannot control or automate.

image

Causes:

  • Your Chrome profile or Chrome browser got corrupted.
  • The UiPath Browser Automation just got installed and you are using it for the first without closing all the Chrome browsers and reopen it again.
  • Chrome bug https://issues.chromium.org/issues/379214836

Since Chrome/Edge v130, when a extension is updated the browser windows it had opened to internal URLs get replaced with “New tab“ instead of being closed.
This also occurs when toggling “Incognito“ or “File URLs“ access for the extension.
Normally, this is just a left over window that can be closed by the user.
But in the case of the UiPath extension, the extension window is hidden by the NativeHost which causes it to become “glitched” when this bug occurs: the user cannot close it and cannot interact with it.

Solution:

Approach #1

Upgrade the UiPath Studio/Robot to 24.10.8 using this installer https://download.uipath.com/versions/24.10.8/UiPathStudio.msi

Install the Chrome/Edge extension shipped within UiPath Studio/Robot to 24.10.8 as the UiPath extension v24.10 no longer uses a background page, and therefore is not affected by the Chrome/Edge >=130.x.x bug.

Approach #2

From UiPath Studio

From a cmd.exe console as Administrator after the Studio/Robot is installed:

For Chrome Offline use

“C:\Program Files\UiPath\Studio\UiPath\SetupExtensions.exe” /chrome-policy-offline /silent

For Edge Offline use

“C:\Program Files\UiPath\Studio\UiPath\SetupExtensions.exe” /edge-policy-offline /silent

For Chrome Online use

“C:\Program Files\UiPath\Studio\UiPath\SetupExtensions.exe” /chromepolicyglobal /silent

For Edge Online use

“C:\Program Files\UiPath\Studio\UiPath\SetupExtensions.exe” /edge-chromium-policyglobal /silent

More details on:

https://docs.uipath.com/studio/standalone/2023.10/user-guide/extension-for-chrome

https://docs.uipath.com/studio/standalone/2023.10/user-guide/extension-for-edge-chromium

Approach #3

When this Chrome bug occurs the only solution is to close the browser from “Settings (three dot button) → Exit“ or add a Kill Process for chrome and reopen the browser.


Let us know which approach helped you to solve the issue.


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