When Cordice will not connect
What to check, in the order that finds the problem fastest, and how to tell ours from yours.
Work down this list rather than across it. It is ordered so that the cheapest checks come first and the ones that need our help come last.
1. Is it us?
status.cordice.org (opens in a new tab) is on a different machine from Cordice, on purpose — a status page hosted on the servers it watches goes quiet at the moment it is needed.
If something there is red, the answer is that we know and are on it, and nothing you do at your end will help.
2. Reload, properly
In a browser, a hard reload — Ctrl+Shift+R, or Cmd+Shift+R on a Mac — fetches everything again instead of trusting what it already has. A client half-updated after a deploy is an unusual state, but it is a real one, and this is what clears it.
On Android, force the app closed from the recent apps list and open it again.
3. Try the other client
Open app.cordice.org (opens in a new tab) in a browser. If the web client works and your phone does not, the fault is on the phone. If neither works, it is the network between you and us — or us.
This one step tells you more than any other, which is why it is this early.
4. Look at the network you are on
Cordice keeps an open connection for live messages, and needs more than plain web browsing to work fully:
- A live connection for messages arriving without a refresh.
- UDP, on high ports, for voice and video.
Guest wi-fi, hotel networks, school and office networks, and some VPNs block exactly these while leaving ordinary web pages working. The symptom is distinctive: pages load, messages do not arrive until you refresh, and voice either never connects or connects with no sound.
Test by switching to mobile data, or to a different network. If it works there, the network was the problem and there is nothing wrong with your account or the app.
5. Voice specifically
If everything else works and only calls fail, it is almost always the network above. Before assuming that:
- Check the browser has permission to use the microphone. A refused permission is remembered, and the app cannot ask again for you.
- Check the right device is selected in the voice settings, especially with headphones that have been plugged in since Cordice was opened.
- Try a wired network. Voice is the part that suffers first on a weak connection.
6. Sign in somewhere else
If a single device misbehaves and nothing above explains it, sign out on that device and back in. Sessions are independent, and one can end up in a state the others are not in.
You can see all of them, and end them, in Settings → Sessions.
Still stuck?
Then it is worth telling us, and the useful report is a specific one:
- what you did, and what happened instead;
- which client — browser and version, or the Android app;
- which network, if you tried more than one;
- whether the web client behaved differently from the app.
Send that to the issue tracker (opens in a new tab) if it looks like a fault, or to [email protected] if it involves your own account. “It does not work” is a message we cannot act on; the list above is one we can.
One thing to expect. Cordice is in alpha. Some of what you find will be genuinely broken rather than misconfigured at your end, and telling us is the fastest way it gets fixed.