Microsoft Edge WebView2

[sidneydavenport]

Does anyone know why there are seven instances of Microsoft Edge WebView2 running alongside Photoshop 2022?  I hope I've solved the freezing/crashing issue but Psd is still running sluggishly and  I would still like to know about this change.

I'm looking at Task Manager on Windows 10 Pro, 64-bit (updated just a few days ago).

Thanks, Sidney

[Lumigraphics]

Misinformation is not helpful.

[Brianloveslight]

Lorraine, 
I feel your pain. I really do. I finally lost what little patience I had left and dumped my windows machine and bought a mac mini. It just works. I never have to worry about stability, updates, fixes, drivers, or downtime. I fire it up, I work happily, and at the end of the day, I power down and am thankful. I know it's an investment, but what price can you put on peace of mind when it comes to productivity?
Best wishes to you.

[Lorraine Mc]

Although I'm not a huge fan of Apple, I did actually start thinking about buying a Mac yesterday.....

[CjAshwal]

I did the same.

--
Cindy J. Ashwal

[personal information removed by moderator]

[DraegerArt]

Yeah I am also a professional and I have to have other programs open while working in Photoshop. On a normal work day I usually have: Outlook, Slack (occasionally also Zoom), Perforce, the Unreal Engine (50/50 fo the time), and Chrome to access Jira, Miro, Confluence, my time card.. etc.

Closing these programs is not really and option and this has never been such an issue until more recently. My work computer is beefy and should be able to handle all of this. It's required for my job. >.< This is why I really want a fix for this. I've personally been using photoshop since like 1998-1999ish?? and I have a lot of experience using it.

ALSO: I just froze again and I had to force it to close... Sooo no crash report yet agaiun. Some dumb popup appeared and asked for feedback about the selection tool and it just went nuts graphically. (I keep turning off those stupid tooltips but they keep re-appearing and causing me issues!)

[JerryandLoisPhotography]

Hi DraegerArt,

Exactly.  No diagnostic tools made available to us.  And you reminded me - my machine is relatively decent, a 2 year old Alienware box with 64 gig, all SSDs.  Decent enough in my case that the issue can be called due to a limited slow box.

[DraegerArt]

Oops I meant to respond to the main thread last time. I just got this again... I don't know what to do when this happens. The program freezes and there is nothing I can seem to do to fix it or get it to return from the freeze, then it doesn't have an auto save or recovery file either even though I have autosave set to on?!?!? 😞 This is the worst. I keep losing work.

[skullous]

Same issue here. Seasoned Art Director and graphic designer since 2005. I use my PC for audio production as well without any problems. It's when I open Adobe stuff that everything freezes and crashes. Out of curiosity, what's everyone's graphics card? Mine is a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, with drivers updated to the latest (today) game-ready drivers. (I did rollback and the issue persisted.)

Cheers!

[Jain Lemos]

Hi @skullous I also have the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 card, however, I was advised to install the studio drivers and not the gaming ones when the primary use is graphics. I don't know if that makes a difference. I'm not experiencing any problems with freezing or crashing (Windows 10 Pro, Photoshop 23.3.2 Release). You wrote, "...when I open Adobe stuff that everything freezes and crashes."

Can you give us more details on which applications are affected and what troubleshooting you've tried so far? What is your exact OS? Here is a screenshot of how my Performance settings are configured. Please take a look at yours to see if it makes any difference.

[Lumigraphics]

You can use Process Explorer from Sysinternals to see in detail what happens when you run your software, it can sometimes help to identify conflicts.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/

[davescm]

In answer to the original post of why Edge Webview2 shows up - take a look here.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/

It is a way of application developers using Microsoft's own technology to access online content which of course can include libraries, AI driven functionality, telemetrics...etc. Whilst we all like to think of our PCs running purely as standalone, we are equally quick to criticise when our applications do not make use of new capabilities.  We say we do not want telemetrics on our PCs and try to block them, then complain when companies remove a function from their application because their metrics show that it is little used.

I fully understand when someone complains about such functionality slowing their PC, but most of the screenshots shown here show a tiny amount of memory and 0% CPU given over to these functions. That is unlikely to be the reason for a PC grinding to a halt.

Dave

[Signfeld]

Unless I've missed it, no one seems to mention that AFAIK one such browser is open for every (third party?) CEP panel you have active (max 15?).

Thankfully, UXP plugins get rid of that.

[SuperFabe]

Sorry I'm late to this party. I've been encountering other issues with MSEdge that it just will not terminate when the application is closed.  The only way to stop it is to force the task to stop.  Create a Shortcut on the Desktop with this command.  taskkill.exe /IM "msedge.exe" /F

This will kill all MS edge tasks.

Then I decided to do some editing in PS and thats when I found this webview nonsense. I went through all the previous comments about unchecking this/that/and the other thing and it didn't work.  So out comes the hammer again. Computers are very stupid and expect to see everything in the right directories. If something isn't found where expected, there are error messages that will show up.  So rather then overanalyzing things...MSWebView2 offends me, so I remove it from where it is supposed to be.

First step is to stop Photoshop. Ensure that it is NOT running or else this will not work as the processes are still open.

Open a Command Prompt as an Administrator.

type ren "C:\Program files\Common Files\Adobe\Microsoft" Microsoft-renamed

exit

This will just rename the directory where the WebView2 and associated junk reside. If there is a problem with your PS running, you can follow the same steps and rename it back.  To keep in the spirit of being non-destructive edits.

After I made this change on my PC the first time I ran PS, it defaulted to the Adobe web helper files in the CEF directory.  I closed & restarted PS and now it opens with just 4 processes and it's back to the traditional screen, not the Creative Cloud Home screen.   I hope this helps others with the WebView2 issues.

[sidneydavenport]

Even though I haven’t had time to try this, I’m so encouraged. Thank you!

[DraegerArt]

So, not sure if this helps, but currently the endless loading/freeze issue I was experiencing with all the webview windows is occuring for me in this manner? https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/freeze-endless-loading-after-trying-to-drag-...

And I do have someone trying to help me figure it out! It no longer pops up all the webview windows when it happens though, so it might be unrelated...however it's the exact same stall I was experiencing with the webview duplicates when I originally posted in this thread.

[DraegerArt]

...but now that I see the more recent comments on this thread, (like @davescm's helpful explanation) this very much might be the exact same issue, because it sounds like maybe webview was not our problem when we were all getting stuck frozen! x.x Feel free to add to my other post if you have more info on that freeze. I can't seem to nail down good repro steps yet..

[karisbi]

Yes, why? I have the same Problem.

[jwallphoto]

This just started for me today. Have to End Task on PS, then reopen the program to save a few .tif files to .jpg. I get maybe two or three done before the program freezes again. At first I thought I'd hit the wrong keyboard shortcut, but the problem persists when I use the mouse for everything.

[SuperFabe]

EdgeWebview2 is a Microsoft addon that allows developers to incorporate HTML,CSS, and Javascript into  their applications,  It is based on a version of Chromium from August of 2021 (check the details of msedge.dll. in the directory).  It IS NOT a core part of Windows.  It DOES NOT get the same security updates that come with Windows update or even the edge browser.  Think of this as their new version of Silverlight or Adobe Flash.  

OK, so here is how to temporarily remove it. Because it well get automatically reinstalled by Creative Cloud.
1) Stop Photoshop and ensure that it is not running.

2) Run these 2 commands from a command prompt

           C:\Windows\System32\taskkill.exe /IM "msedge.exe" /F
           C:\Windows\System32\taskkill.exe /IM "msedgewebview2.exe" /F

This will force kill ALL msedge and msedgewebview2 processeses

3) Delete or rename the directory C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Microsoft.  It will get reinstalled EVERYTIME that Creative cloud updates or PS gets updated, It's a forced install.

4) Restart Photoshop.

Please continue to post the results.

Oh, and for the Mac people, the roadmap for msedgewebview2 is for it to be on the MacOS platform in the future. 

[Lumigraphics]

It actually is a core part of Windows. They don't have two totally separate rendering engines, not sure why you would think that. Its just allows Windows apps to call a web view inside a window.

And PLEASE don't follow this advice, which is not helpful. "Tips" like this just lead to headaches for support folks when a user can't figure out why something isn't working.

[SuperFabe]

If this is a core part of Windows, then why is the msedge.dll that
edgewebview2 uses is at version 92.x when the actual edge browser version
of msedge.dll is version 104.x. The roadmap for this product clearly
states that Microsoft intends to role this out to MacOS and Linux (which is
NOT windows)

Edgewebview doesn’t get updated in any windows update. As this is a
community support forum, I presented a workaround for people to try to get
their PS applications running again until Adobe actually fixes the problem.

--
=] David

[Lumigraphics]

Do you really think all web rendering is handled by just one dll file?

And Apple used to have Safari for Windows, just like how Microsoft had IE for Mac. And how Google Chrome the browser is both part of Android/Chrome the operating systems and available on both Mac and Windows.

[Fasih K]

the fix is very simple

open Photoshop then, task manager, expand PS, then select "Microsoft Edge WebView2" right click "view file location" then in new window rename the exe file to tmp or anything. then restart photoshop. Microsoft Edge WebView2 is gone forever