Empty windows appear in list

[ajkessel]

I recently updated to the latest official release and started noticing many "empty" windows in my popup window list. I don't recall seeing this with earlier builds. Could finestray ignore/hide any windows with no names?

[benbuck]

Hi @ajkessel,

Yeah, I saw this once also, but haven't been able to reproduce it since then. I'm sure it's because I did a complete rewrite of the window tracking code to eliminate polling and support some new auto-tray features, but I don't understand the cause yet. I theory I already filter out all the "empty" windows like before, but clearly something isn't working right with that.

If you are able to find a good way to reproduce it, please let me know. If it happens to you all the time, probably providing your debug log would help.

Thanks,
Benbuck

[benbuck]

@ajkessel I noticed that the screenshot you attached had some potentially sensitive information in it, so I removed it from your report

-Benbuck

[ajkessel]

Thanks for removing! I thought it just had the application names but perhaps there was something more -- in any case, you're aware of the issue. For me, it occurs nearly 100% reproducibly. Should I post a debug log here or provide to you out-of-band?

[benbuck]

Hi @ajkessel,

No problem, it looked like it was an email address in the title of one of the windows.

If you're comfortable with attaching the debug log here, that would be great. Please make sure it doesn't have any sensitive information in it though. Otherwise if you prefer to provide it out-of-band just let me know.

Thanks,
Benbuck

[ajkessel]

Apparently there are a lot of window titles revealing Google search queries, message subjects etc. I was going to try to redact it but probably just easier if I send it to you out-of-band.

Seems like GH must have a "private upload" option to submit to an issue as well? I'm not sure how.

[benbuck]

Hi @ajkessel,

I haven't tried it before, but maybe you could privately report a security issue?
https://github.com/benbuck/finestray/security

If that doesn't sound good, I could add a public GPG key to the repo, and you could encrypt the file with that before uploading?

-Benbuck

[benbuck]

In case it's relevant to anyone who sees this, the sensitive information concern with debug logs is highlighted in the Finestray privacy policy:

https://github.com/benbuck/finestray/blob/main/PRIVACY.md

[ajkessel]

Reported as security issue. Let me know if you need anything more.

[ajkessel]

I posted the full log to the security issue, hopefully that helps.

A related issue is that certain background processes that I start with run-hidden are now in the popup menu. I'm sure this is related to your refactoring of the window detection code. Is there some way to keep these out of the list? Perhaps you could just add a mechanism to ignore certain windows entirely?

[benbuck]

Hi @ajkessel,

Thanks for following up and providing that log. I'm seeing something a little unexpected, which is some of the log lines like "menu minimize visible window" should not be in the v0.4 release as far as I can tell. If you're not running with that build, would you mind please switching to that (or the latest internal build) and seeing if you can still replicate the issue?

Thanks,
Benbuck

[ajkessel]

I have been on this for at least a couple of weeks. (You might want to update your copyright line date!)

[benbuck]

Hi @ajkessel,

That's the correct version, and correct date for the 0.4 release. I don't understand how some of those log messages are showing up, but I'll look through the log some more to see if I can find any hints about this issue.

Thanks,
Benbuck

[ajkessel]

Just a side detail: I just updated from Windows 10 to 11 and have the same behavior with finestray.

[benbuck]

Yes, I saw it on Windows 11 also.

-Benbuck