Black Screen issue on PWA due to Chrome Tab Wakeup Breaks

[ChiragDhawan630]

Describe the bug
A tab-switching issue in Google Chrome (and PWAs) causes a white screen and loss of login cookies when reopening a previously loaded page. The problem appears to stem from Chrome’s caching and optimization behavior, which interrupts proper page reloads after the browser is closed and reopened.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Open the affected website in Google Chrome.

2. Switch to another browser tab.

3. Close Google Chrome entirely.

4. Reopen Chrome and navigate back to the same site.

5. The page fails to load correctly, showing a white screen and resetting login cookies.

Expected behavior
The page should reload normally upon reopening Chrome, restoring the previous session and keeping the user logged in.

Screenshots
If applicable, add screenshots showing the white screen or console errors.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

OS: Android

Browser: Google Chrome

Version:

Smartphone (please complete the following information):

Device: Samsung M34

OS: Android 16

Additional context
This issue likely arises due to Chrome’s aggressive caching and optimization mechanisms, which disrupt normal page reload behavior when switching tabs and closing the browser. It affects both the standard web version and PWA installations of the site.

[autosam]

I'm having the same issue, users suddenly started reporting getting black screen, and have to fully close and reopen the app to get it to load (to varying degrees of success)

Seem to have started happening after the latest Chrome update.

[autosam]

This seemed to have been indeed caused by the latest (v143+) Chrome update.

Doing this seems to have fixed the issue for me:
https://issues.chromium.org/issues/466790291