Brave Ads are not delivered on Wayland

[tmancey]

Description

Steps to Reproduce

1. View an ad

Actual result:

Ad is not delivered

Expected result:

Ad should be delivered

Reproduces how often:

Easily reproduced

Brave version (brave://version info)

Version/Channel Information:

• Can you reproduce this issue with the current release? Yes
• Can you reproduce this issue with the beta channel? Yes
• Can you reproduce this issue with the nightly channel? Yes

Other Additional Information:

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields? N/A
• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Rewards? N/A
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome? N/A

Miscellaneous Information:

Brower state changed to onunidle and Browser state changed to onidle do not appear in the logs. Investigate why these events are not triggered from Chromium.

[Digitalone1]

Since Chromium does not have Wayland native support yet, an investigation on how Xwayland works might help.

Native support will be implemented in the future by Ozone platform.

[kcalvelli]

Since Chromium does not have Wayland native support yet, an investigation on how Xwayland works might help.

Native support will be implemented in the future by Ozone platform.

Sure it does. This is an issue when running Brave with --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland

[Digitalone1]

It seems this issue isn't making progress. Anyway I don't understand a thing. Wasn't custom icon notification supposed to resolve this problem on Wayland?

Are custom notifications enabled or they're still in testing stage?

[tmancey]

@kcalvelli are you saying that the issue only occurs when running Brave with --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland?

[kcalvelli]

@kcalvelli are you saying that the issue only occurs when running Brave with --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland?

In my experience, this is an issue when running with those flags in a native Wayland session (where GDK_BACKEND=wayland). I have not tested XWayland (where GDK_BACKEND=x11). It may also be an issue there.

[Digitalone1]

It's an issue also for GDK_BACKEND=x11

Tons of following lines in brave://rewards-internals/

ERROR:publisher.cc(774)] Publisher info not found

[tmancey]

This log entry is not related to ad delivery

[kcalvelli]

Installed 1.30.86 today, and decided to run Brave in a Wayland session native GDK_BACKEND=wayland /usr/bin/brave-browser-stable --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland %U. To my surprise, I received ads. They were custom, not native and the placement was right in the middle of the browser. But there were ads!

[Digitalone1]

So the problem is not resolved, but the custom ads are a workaround.

[Digitalone1]

This is custom, right?

[AdnanHodzic]

Installed 1.30.86 today, and decided to run Brave in a Wayland session native GDK_BACKEND=wayland /usr/bin/brave-browser-stable --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland %U. To my surprise, I received ads. They were custom, not native and the placement was right in the middle of the browser. But there were ads!

Also running the same Brave version but installed as a snap, been running it for an hour and didn't see any ads.

GDK_BACKEND=wayland /snap/bin/brave --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform %U

[Digitalone1]

@AdnanHodzic add --ozone-platform=wayland

On my system, Gnome Wayland, it's not needed to add GDK_BACKEND variable.

Anyway the screenshot I posted is a system notification ad because afterward I got a custom ad, so this seems to be resolved.

[AdnanHodzic]

@Digitalone1 yea, it seems like this doesn't work with snap package.

GDK_BACKEND=wayland /snap/bin/brave --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland %U
[2944400:2944400:0929/090459.868846:ERROR:wayland_connection.cc(180)] Failed to connect to Wayland display
[2944400:2944400:0929/090459.868986:FATAL:ozone_platform_wayland.cc(211)] Failed to initialize Wayland platform
[0929/090459.869751:ERROR:process_memory_linux.cc(42)] open: Permission denied (13)
/snap/brave/131/opt/brave.com/brave/brave-browser: line 48: 2944400 Trace/breakpoint trap   (core dumped) "$HERE/brave" "$@"

and same result is when I leave out GDK_BACKEND=wayland

Then I re-installed Brave using apt and running:

/usr/bin/brave-browser-stable --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland %U

does display ads, and these definitively don't look like native ads:
.

But regardless, this is how I'll start Brave from now on to have/get Brave rewards on Wayland. Thanks for sharing @kcalvelli!

[Digitalone1]

This seems definitely resolved. I got the first time a system ad and then different custom ads.

[tmancey]

Great. Can you please let us know what command-line args you needed to use to get ads to work. Thanks

[Digitalone1]

Great. Can you please let us know what command-line args you needed to use to get ads to work. Thanks

On Arch with chromium based browsers there's a convention of using a text file under ~/.config for setting custom flags to append to command line execution. I set the following in brave-flags.conf

--enable-features=UseOzonePlatform
--ozone-platform=wayland

I didn't set the GDK_BACKEND=wayland env variable which I think is already set by Gnome DE by default.

Yesterday I got the last ad, then updated to the last 1.30.87 version and didn't get any ad yet. I will wait some days and report if they will show, otherwise there should be an issue with the latest version or with the packaging or brave-bin on AUR.

I used to build a custom installation from the rpm package, but yesterday I installed brave-bin from AUR which is not built on rmp, but the generic Linux package.

[AdnanHodzic]

For GNOME users on Debian based distros you can install alacarte package (apt intsall alacarte) which allows you edit menu entries for your applications. Thought that was the easiest way to add the necessary args to Brave browser.

[Digitalone1]

I just got a custom ad, so it's working also on brave-bin from AUR.

So I confirm ads are showing with the following flags:

--enable-features=UseOzonePlatform
--ozone-platform=wayland

It could be also that it's working even without these flags because the changes in 1.30 were determining to fix the issue. It has to be tested.

[sebkolind]

I had the same issue and I am running:

Arch Linux
Wayland
Sway
Mako (notifications)
Brave (brave-bin, AUR)

And I can confirm that I receive ads after setting GDK_BACKEND=wayland and adding the flags @Digitalone1 have specified in my ~/.config/brave-flags.conf file. Before doing that ads did not show

[tmancey]

Thank you all for helping resolve this issue. I will discuss internally to see if there is a better way for Wayland users.

[tmancey]

The default Ozone platform is still X11 for CR93 and not Wayland but we don't need to run with --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform or set it in chrome://flags

[tmancey]

Closing this issue as there is a workaround above. Once again, thank you.

[Digitalone1]

The default Ozone platform is still X11 for CR93 and not Wayland but we don't need to run with --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform or set it in chrome://flags

Yes, Chrome 95 enabled ozone by default and there's no possibility to enable/disable it.

--ozone-platform=wayland is still needed and it can be checked under brave://gpu at Ozone platform

XDG_SESSION_TYPE is also set to wayland there.

[aryklein]

Thanks @Digitalone1! it worked for me as well :-)
No needed to set up GDK_BACKEND=wayland

[snirt]

Works for me too :)
BTW, to edit the Brave shortcut in Gnome DE, you can add the arguments to /usr/share/application/brave-browser.desktop by editing the Exec line:
Exec={path-to-brave} --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland %U

got it from here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8850938/how-to-add-arguments-to-links-in-gnome-shell-menu