Troubleshooting failed chat connections

NearbySpy uses Stream Chat to power in-platform messaging between Investigators, Operators, and Clients. Most of the time the connection is invisible — you open Messages and your threads load. When the connection fails, this article walks through what to check and how to recover.

What you might see

• The Messages tab loads but channels are blank with a "reconnecting" indicator.
• A specific thread will not send new messages — the composer rejects the send.
• Unread badges look stuck even though you have opened the thread.
• An explicit error stating that chat could not connect.

The most common causes

1. Network interruption. A flaky Wi-Fi connection or VPN can drop the persistent chat connection. The client will try to reconnect on its own.
2. Stale browser tab. Tabs left open overnight sometimes lose their token and need a refresh.
3. Sign-in expired. Your NearbySpy session expired in the background — chat needs an authenticated session to reconnect.
4. Browser extensions. Aggressive privacy extensions, ad blockers, or content blockers can intercept the chat connection.
5. Corporate firewall. Some networks block the WebSocket endpoints chat relies on.

Quick recovery steps

1. Refresh the page once. This re-issues the chat token from your active session.
2. Confirm you are still signed in by opening another dashboard tab. If you were signed out, sign back in and return to Messages.
3. Toggle Wi-Fi off and on, or try a different network. A VPN that lost its tunnel is the single most common culprit.
4. Try an incognito or private window with extensions disabled. If chat works there, an extension is interfering — whitelist the NearbySpy domain.
5. If you are on a corporate network, ask your IT contact to allow WebSocket connections to the messaging endpoint NearbySpy uses.

If only one thread is broken

If your other channels work but a single Case's chat will not load, the issue is usually permission-related rather than network-related. Confirm you still have membership on the Case — see What to do when you see access denial on a Case. If the Case Owner removed you from the Case, the chat channel for that Case becomes inaccessible automatically.

If badges look stuck

Open the affected channel fully. If the badge persists after that, sign out and sign in to refresh the chat token. The general behavior is described in Investigator notifications and unread badges.

Reporting the problem

If recovery steps do not help, file a support ticket with the steps you tried, the browser and operating system you are using, and roughly when the failure started. Use the guidance in Contact form reasons and what to include. Support can verify the chat service health on our side and confirm whether your account is reaching it.

What we cannot recover

Chat history is preserved on the server, so refreshing or signing out and back in does not lose messages. If a message you typed never sent because the connection failed, however, the unsent draft may not survive a refresh — copy the text to your clipboard before refreshing if you cannot afford to lose it.