Editor forgets settings

  • Unknown's avatar
    nigelboid · Member ·

    Hello,

    The editor forgets settings between invocations the latest macOS Safari 15.0 (e.g., General : Use Theme Styles). Also, I keep getting the features tour presented to me almost every time.

    I have tried the usual: clearing caches and cookies and other website data. I have disabled content blockers. However, my settings still do not persist.

    All this appears to to work well on Chrome on the same computer.

    Do you have any suggestions to help me have WordPress remember settings on Safari?

    Thank you,
    Igor

    WP.com: Yes
    Correct account: Yes

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Hi Igor, so Safari always forgets your settings, and forgets you’ve already seen the tours, but other browsers are working alright?

    It sounds like it could be an issue with your cookie settings. Can you check what you see here in both browsers?
    https://wordpress.com/support/third-party-cookies/#checking-your-browser

  • Unknown's avatar
    nigelboid · Member ·

    Thank you for the suggestion.

    I have tried relaxing this Safari setting for this before, and it did not help. However, I will try it again in case I did something wrong the first time.

    Your link now confirms that I have third-party cookies enabled:

    “Great, third party cookies are properly enabled in your browser!”

    However, why is WordPress using what appear as third-party cookies to Safari? If this is indeed the fix, then I have to disable this restriction for all web sites, and that seems undesirable.

    Surely this is something WordPress could remedy?

    Thanks again,
    Igor

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Safari should allow you to block all third party cookies while making a few exceptions. WordPress does sometimes need third party cookies if you’re editing on one domain while your login is in another.

    To clarify, though, did you have third party cookies enabled already when you were getting repeating product tours? If so, can you let us know which page is displaying them? Any info we can get to help duplicate the issue here would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

  • Unknown's avatar
    nigelboid · Member ·

    Yes, I was surprised as I am never editing a domain that is not in the WordPress tree. I only edit ayradyss.wordpress.com.

    To answer your request for clarification: I think so, but I am not certain. I did turn off that same restriction which your earlier link indicated, and I think I still got the error. I have turned it off again, and I will leave it off for a day or two.

    So far, the problem has not recurred after I quit Safari and launched it again. That was a quick and reliable test previously. So, things look better. If the editor keeps the setting and the tour does not return tomorrow or Wednesday, then I will confirm that as the fix.

    However, that setting in Safari applies across all sites. I do not see an option to limit it to WordPress only. I am specifically talking about Safari: Preferences: Privacy: Website tracking : Prevent cross-site tracking.

    I edit the blog https://ayradyss.wordpress.com via https://wordpress.com/home/ayradyss.wordpress.com

    Thank you very much for sticking with this and following up. I appreciate your help!

    Please let me know what other information I can provide to help.

    Igor

  • Unknown's avatar
    aisajib · Member ·

    Hi there!

    Yes, I was surprised as I am never editing a domain that is not in the WordPress tree. I only edit ayradyss.wordpress.com.

    We use cookies that come from slightly different domains (like wp.com). So that may need the third-party cookie settings to be enabled. We have more information about cookies here if you’d like to check it out: https://automattic.com/cookies/

    So far, the problem has not recurred after I quit Safari and launched it again. That was a quick and reliable test previously. So, things look better. If the editor keeps the setting and the tour does not return tomorrow or Wednesday, then I will confirm that as the fix.

    I’m glad to hear that the issue seems to have been resolved. Do let us know how it goes.

    However, that setting in Safari applies across all sites. I do not see an option to limit it to WordPress only. I am specifically talking about Safari: Preferences: Privacy: Website tracking : Prevent cross-site tracking.

    I don’t see the option to change it on a website level at the moment, so I’m not 100% sure if something has changed in Safari. Usually, if that setting is turned on, we show a banner asking for permission. Granting the permission allows WordPress.com to use third-party cookies (see this page to learn more: https://wordpress.com/support/remote-login-permission/ ).

    If you didn’t see that banner before, that’s fine, as it’s mostly needed when using WordPress.com on a site with a custom domain. The fact that you were dismissing the product tours and they were still showing up makes us think that something on your browser wasn’t ‘remembering’ that you’ve already seen the pop-ups. And that’s most often due to cookie settings.

    Please let us know how it goes. Hopefully relaunching Safari did the trick!

  • Unknown's avatar
    nigelboid · Member ·

    Ok. I tried several other combinations.

    First of all, “Prevent cross-site tracking” is the Safari 15.0 setting which causes the problem. If I turn it off, I am fine. If I leave it on, then WordPress forgets my settings. Previous versions of Safari dealt with cookies different and did not precipitate this behavior.

    So, I know how to fix my problem, but the solution seems suboptimal. Specifically, I do not want to give all web sites the ability to leave tracking cookies just to get WordPress to work with less hassle.

    I also see the wp.com cookies in addition to the wordpress.com cookies. I think that updating WordPress to only use wordpress.com cookies would create a much more resilient and secure solution for this issue.

    Thank you,
    Igor

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi Igor,

    So, I know how to fix my problem, but the solution seems suboptimal. Specifically, I do not want to give all web sites the ability to leave tracking cookies just to get WordPress to work with less hassle.

    I completely agree with you here, but unfortunately recent changes in how browsers handle tracking and privacy doesn’t leave websites much room to manoeuvre, and especially not platforms like ours where we need to track you across different websites, each with their own domain. At this point all I can tell you is that we are aware of the problem, and our systems team is actively working on finding a solution, but there’s no way of telling how long that might take.

    I also see the wp.com cookies in addition to the wordpress.com cookies. I think that updating WordPress to only use wordpress.com cookies would create a much more resilient and secure solution for this issue.

    I’m not sure why we have two sets of cookies like that (I think the wp.com ones are specifically for our API, but that’s just a guess), but I can tell you making a change like this would require a complete overhaul of WordPress.com’s entire system, which would be a mammoth task that will likely cause many more problems than it would solve. So while I really appreciate you trying to brainstorm solutions, this just wouldn’t be feasible :)

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