glanceapp/glance · error

no JS challenge found

Error message

no JS challenge found

What it means

Thrown by fetchRedditLoidCookie (internal/glance/widget-reddit.go:416) when the page returned by https://www.reddit.com/ with status 200 does not contain the markup matched by redditChallengePattern. Glance solves Reddit's anti-bot JS challenge by regex-extracting the challenge string from the HTML; if Reddit changes the challenge page structure, stops issuing challenges, or serves a different page (block page, redirect target, localized variant), the pattern finds nothing and this error fires.

Source

Thrown at internal/glance/widget-reddit.go:416

	if err != nil {
		return "", err
	}
	defer response.Body.Close()

	if response.StatusCode != http.StatusOK {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("unexpected status code %d when requesting challenge page", response.StatusCode)
	}

	challengeBody, err := io.ReadAll(response.Body)
	if err != nil {
		return "", err
	}

	challengeMatches := redditChallengePattern.FindSubmatch(challengeBody)
	tokenMatches := redditTokenPattern.FindSubmatch(challengeBody)

	if challengeMatches == nil {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("no JS challenge found")
	}

	if tokenMatches == nil {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("no token found in challenge page")
	}

	challengeStr := string(challengeMatches[1])
	token := string(tokenMatches[1])
	solution := challengeStr + challengeStr // the JS does: e + e

	params := url.Values{
		"solution":     {solution},
		"js_challenge": {"1"},
		"token":        {token},
	}
	request, err = http.NewRequest("GET", "https://www.reddit.com/?"+params.Encode(), nil)
	if err != nil {
		return "", err

View on GitHub (pinned to 91324e8de7)

Solutions

1. Update Glance to the latest release — challenge regex fixes land frequently whenever Reddit changes the page
2. Run from a residential IP or different network to rule out Reddit serving a block page instead of the challenge
3. Check if a cached loid cookie still exists (Glance falls back to it for up to 6 hours); the widget only fully fails when there is no cache
4. Report the issue upstream with your Glance version so redditChallengePattern can be updated

// Go: treat as transient; Glance already falls back to a cached loid cookie.
loid, err := getRedditLoid()
if err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "no JS challenge found") {
        // Reddit page variant or block page; retry later, use cache
    }
}

When it happens

Trigger: GET https://www.reddit.com/ returns 200 but the body lacks the expected JS-challenge markup: Reddit updated/removed the challenge format, Reddit served a block/captcha page to your IP instead of a challenge, a proxy or CDN rewrote the response body, or reddit already set cookies so no challenge was needed but the body also lacks the token pattern.

Common situations: Running Glance from a datacenter/VPS IP that Reddit flags, running an older Glance version after Reddit changed its anti-bot page, egress through a corporate proxy that alters responses, or Reddit regional variants serving different HTML.

Related errors

• no token found in challenge page
• no loid cookie found
• could not solve reddit challenge
• unexpected status code %d when submitting challenge solution
• subreddit is required

AI-assisted analysis of glanceapp/glance@91324e8de7 (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/fedbbc6bde4f138b. Report an issue: GitHub.