[Updated] Reddit chat not working or says 'Failed to retrieve chat content'? You're not alone

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story from (April 6, 2023) follows:

Here’s the crux of the article in video form:

Reddit users have recently been reporting an issue that prevents them from accessing their chats on mobile and desktop. The issue seems to be affecting both browser and mobile application users.

The chat feature has reportedly been broken for weeks and still persists. It is currently experiencing numerous issues that are negatively impacting the user experience.

Reddit chat not working

According to some, the Reddit chat feature is not working or loading (1,2,3,4,5) their messages properly. This is worse for those who use Reddit on their phones as it constantly shows the ‘Failed to retrieve chat content’ error.

The error pops up right when you click the ‘Chat’ icon or start a new chat with another Reddit account. Once this error appears, there’s not much that users can do to get rid of it.

Going by the reports, it seems that the chat functionality has been broken across the board for over two weeks. Apart from the mobile chat not loading, desktop users have also been experiencing some quirks.

Usually when you receive a message request from an account, you can either ‘Accept’ or ‘Ignore’ it.

However, some desktop users are unable to ‘Ignore’ the request as pressing the designated button does nothing. The same happens (1,2) for the ‘Report’ and ‘Mark as spam’ buttons.

Due to this bug, users are unable to get rid of the annoying red dot on top of their ‘Chat’ icon. In some cases, they are seeing messages from blocked accounts in their Reddit chat even after hiding them.

I block someone after after talking to them in DMs a bit and I hid their chat so It wouldn’t take up space. For some reason it keeps popping back up every time I close out of the Reddit.
Source

These issues have made the Reddit chat feature almost unusable for a lot of users. Unfortunately, the Reddit team is yet to officially acknowledge the problem where chat is not working properly for some.

We hope they find the root cause behind the issue and fix it as soon as possible. We’ll keep an eye on this matter and update this article to reflect noteworthy information.

01:18 pm (IST): Recently, a Reddit admin stated that the devs are aware of the issue and have found the root cause of it. But it will take some time for a fix to be implemented.

04:15 pm (IST): Some users are reporting that the Reddit chat is getting stuck in ‘syncing’ for them (1, 2, 3).

04:10 pm (IST): A Reddit admin has confirmed that the patch for the problem will be included in this week’s app release.

[Update 4/10]: Thanks for the continued patience everyone! Just wanted to confirm that the fix for this issue will be rolling out in this week’s app release. I’ll update you all as we get closer to the release!
Source

05:53 pm (IST): Users who couldn’t get rid of red dot for message notifications on mobile can use chat on the website for a potential solution.

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