Panel not opening on ARC

[JurrienLetsTalk]

I installed the extension on ARC (Version 1.110.0 (67696), Chromium Engine Version 139.0.7258.156) on MacOS, but while the options open just fine, I do not get any tab, panel, or anything else when clicking the Ollama Client button.

The options page looks great, I have a working Ollama install, but the panel does not show. I am using the sidebar and multi-profile ARC.

[Shishir435]

I installed the extension on ARC (Version 1.110.0 (67696), Chromium Engine Version 139.0.7258.156) on MacOS, but while the options open just fine, I do not get any tab, panel, or anything else when clicking the Ollama Client button.

The options page looks great, I have a working Ollama install, but the panel does not show. I am using the sidebar and multi-profile ARC.

Thanks for pointing out, but unfortunately this is an Arc-specific issue.
Arc doesn’t support the chrome.sidePanel API, which Ollama Client relies on. Other Chromium browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, etc.) work fine.

• Dust community thread
• Dust support reply (Arc won’t add support soon)
• Reddit discussion

[JurrienLetsTalk]

That is nice, but the site shows ARC to be working. So that would be false advertising. I tested it in Opera too, and this has the same result. I presume this has the same reason?

[Shishir435]

That is nice, but the site shows ARC to be working. So that would be false advertising. I tested it in Opera too, and this has the same result. I presume this has the same reason?

Hey, sorry about this, I should have tested the extension across all the mentioned browsers on the site( It's my mistake that I've assumed all chromium based browser would have the same chrome.sidePanel API)

Turns out both Arc and Opera don’t support the chrome.sidePanel API, which Ollama Client depends on. That’s why the panel never shows up there, even though the options page opens fine. My mistake for not catching this earlier. I’ll update the site and docs to remove Arc/Opera from the supported list.

Just a question.....

Would it help if I added a simple chat window inside the Options page as a fallback for browsers that don’t support the sidebar?

[Shishir435]

That is nice, but the site shows ARC to be working. So that would be false advertising. I tested it in Opera too, and this has the same result. I presume this has the same reason?

After some research, I figured out that Opera uses a different sidebar API, so I updated the code and submitted it for review on the Opera Add-ons store. Let's hope it gets published! Thanks for pointing it out, otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed these issues.

[JurrienLetsTalk]

Would it help if I added a simple chat window inside the Options page as a fallback for browsers that don’t support the sidebar?

I think that would at least be nice to have something, but personally, I would rather have a new window popup if the chrome.sidePanel API can not be used. I do not know if there is an option to relate that popup to the screen/tab it was opened from, but that would be secondary. One can still copy-paste when the "reduced functionality mode" is active.

[Shishir435]

I think that would at least be nice to have something, but personally, I would rather have a new window popup if the chrome.sidePanel API can not be used. I do not know if there is an option to relate that popup to the screen/tab it was opened from, but that would be secondary. One can still copy-paste when the "reduced functionality mode" is active.

I’ve implemented a popup fallback for browsers that don’t support chrome.sidePanel (e.g. Opera). That works fine, since chrome.action.onClicked fires and I just reuse sidepanel.html as the popup (so I don’t have to duplicate code).

The problem is Arc: in Arc the onClicked event is never fired when you click the extension icon. This means there’s currently no way to trigger the popup or even a new window programmatically. It’s not an issue with my extension, it’s a limitation of Arc’s extension API support.
see this demo:

Screen.Recording.2025-09-04.at.10.52.01.PM.mov

[JurrienLetsTalk]

Thanks! Unfortunate that Arc doesn't properly support it. It's kind of silly, to be honest. I guess the bug remains open for Arc, but can be closed for Opera 🤔

Either way, thanks! I'll check the opera extension when it's released.

[Senpasi]

Thanks for fallback! A small life hack how add to sidebar in Opera:

• In opera://flags/ set "Custom user sites for browser sidebar" to "Enable"
• Add link to sidebar with url from popup window - chrome-extension://bfaoaaogfcgomkjfbmfepbiijmciinjl/sidepanel.html (bfaoaaogfcgomkjfbmfepbiijmciinjl - extension id)