Troubleshooting

Fix a missing desktop app, a Discord connection denied on Windows, missing permissions, a presence that detects nothing, and Linux installation issues.

Start with the diagnostic

Open the side panel on the tab you want to share and read each row on its own:

Extension installed
User scripts allowed
Nowly Desktop detected
Discord connected
A presence is installed
Activity detected

The first row that is not green is the next thing to fix.

Nowly Desktop is not detected

Install the desktop app from the desktop app page, then click Check connection. If you just installed it, restart the browser so it finds the app. The app must be installed on the same computer as the browser.

On Linux, a browser installed from Flatpak or Snap may block native messaging entirely. Use a browser installed from your distribution's repositories or from the vendor's own package.

Discord is not connected

Open the Discord desktop app, wait until it has loaded, then click Check connection. Discord in a browser tab cannot receive local Rich Presence.

If you run Discord Stable next to Discord PTB or Canary, keep only one open: on Windows, the desktop app connects to the first Discord pipe.

Discord IPC: "Access is denied" (Windows)

The runtime logs may show:

TEXT

reason=open \\.\pipe\discord-ipc-0: Access is denied.

Integrations should rely on the stable native response code DISCORD_IPC_ACCESS_DENIED rather than on this localized text.

Windows refuses access to Discord's local pipe because Discord runs as administrator while the browser and the desktop app do not. Fix it in this order:

Quit Discord completely, including its notification-area icon.
In Task Manager, end any remaining Discord.exe process.
In the properties of the Discord shortcut, uncheck Run this program as an administrator (Compatibility tab) and Run as administrator (Shortcut tab, Advanced).
Start Discord normally.
Click Reconnect in Nowly, or restart the browser.

Do not run the browser or the desktop app as administrator instead: native messaging is launched by the browser, and an elevated browser is a security risk. The desktop app can show a system notification when it detects this mismatch: a Windows tray notification, a macOS Notification Center notification, or a Linux notification when notify-send is available.

User scripts are not allowed

Turn on Allow user scripts in Nowly's details page (Chromium browsers), or Developer mode on older versions of Chrome. In Firefox, allow the user scripts permission from about:addons. Then reload the tab and reopen the side panel.

No activity is detected

Check that:

the presence for this website is installed and turned on,
sharing is not paused (Ctrl+Shift+U toggles it) and the presence is not snoozed or outside its schedule,
the tab is not hidden from the Activity tab,
something is actually playing: most presences show nothing while you browse unless Show browsing activity is on,
the address matches the presence's supported sites, shown on its library page,
the tab was reloaded after the presence was installed.

If the website changed and the presence shows wrong or no information, use Report a problem on its library page.

Another Rich Presence tool interferes

Other tools that set your Discord activity, such as PreMiD or a music player with its own Rich Presence, can replace or clear what Nowly sends. Turn them off while you test.

Linux: "update available" right after installing the .deb

The .deb was never installed. Double-clicking a .deb does nothing on some desktops (XFCE with Thunar, for example). Install it from a terminal:
```
sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/nowly-host.deb
```
dpkg -L nowly-host should then list /usr/lib/nowly-client/nowly-host.

An old per-user installation takes priority. If you used the .tar.gz archive before, remove its leftovers:

rm -f ~/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/nowly.client.json
rm -f ~/.config/*/NativeMessagingHosts/nowly.client.json
rm -f ~/.local/share/NowlyClient/nowly-host

Then quit the browser completely and open it again.

Linux: Discord from Flatpak or Snap

Sandboxed Discord creates its socket in its own folder. The desktop app looks for discord-ipc-0 to discord-ipc-9 in $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, $TMPDIR and /tmp. Link the real socket to the expected place, for example for Flathub:

ln -sf "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/app/com.discordapp.Discord/discord-ipc-0" "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/discord-ipc-0"

The step-by-step guide, including a link that survives reboots and the Snap path, is Nowly on Linux.

Logs

The extension keeps runtime logs you can copy from the side panel with Copy logs. They can contain the addresses of supported pages you visited: read them before sharing.
The desktop app writes nowly-host.log in %LOCALAPPDATA%\NowlyClient\ (Windows), ~/Library/Caches/NowlyClient/ (macOS) or ~/.cache/NowlyClient/ (Linux).

Still stuck? Open a ticket on the Nowly Discord server with the failing diagnostic row and your system.

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