2024 UPDATE: In May, 2024 the developer of slither.io was able to find a way to bypass these issues. It just works now. Yeah!!!!
Fixing slither.io Loading Problems
For years, slither.io worked just fine.
But then as the war between hackers and browsers really heated up, slither.io has become harder and harder to load.
Background
The problem is that slither.io was designed to use HTTP (a straightforward protocol), not HTTPS (the exact same protocol, but with complex security added). It was designed in 2016 so that if someone accidentally went to https://slither.io, the page would load, but it would re-direct them to http://slither.io.
But, most browsers now automatically try going to https:// even if you type http://.
What happens is you get "infinite reloading": you ask to go to http://slither.io, but the browser instead goes to https://slither.io. It loads the page, and JavaScript on the page says "Please go to http://slither.io". The browser dutifully does so. But the browser doesn't have AI-level intelligence. It doesn't remember that it just tried going there. So it does its thing trying out https://slither.io instead. And the loop continues.
Making things worse, if the browser realizes that it keeps reloading the same page, it may eventually stay on https://slither.io. That used to work, but now often won't: you'll see the normal slither.io website, but cannot connect to any servers. That's because the browser, again without AI-level intelligence, blocks the connections to the server since they use HTTP but the browser is forcing you to use HTTPS.
Issue #1 - Infinite Reloading
If you enter "http://slither.io" into your browser, do not see the main slither.io webpage, and the address in the browser keeps flickering, it is stuck in this "infinite reload" thing.
- Use VPN. If you use a browser-based VPN (browser extension or built into the browser, not one that protects your whole computer), it will normally fix the reloading automatically. Browser-based VPNs use a "web proxy", where the browser connects to the VPN's web proxy, and the web proxy makes a separate connection to the slither.io servers. This magically fixes the problem (for now, at least).
- Allow insecure content. See Issue #2 below. This may help.
- If those don't help, you can try using Chromium v96 or earlier (see the NTL website).
- Opera GX may work (if so, it may not in a future version though)
- You can set up your browser to start Chrome using ' host-resolver-rules="MAP slither.io ntl-slither.com"' with Linux, or ' host-resolver-rules=MAP slither.io ntl-slither.com' in Windows.
- Disable HTTP upgrades. In the browser settings, look for: [1] chrome://settings/security Always use secure connections to OFF, [2] chrome://flags/ Search for HTTPS, change Use HTTPS by Default to DISABLE, [3] chrome://net-internals/#hsts (put slither.io at the bottom).
Issue #2 - Cannot connect to any server (999ms)
If you do see the main slither.io webpage, but cannot connect to any slither.io server to play, you'll notice that the address shows "https://slither.io", not "http://slither.io". To prevent infinite reloading, the browser ignored the JavaScript redirect back to http://. But, the browser then refuses to allow the connection to the slither.io servers to play the game, since they also use HTTP.
- Allow insecure content. To the left of "https://slither.io" in the address bar of your browser, there will be an icon (often a padlock) that you can click (you might need to right-click). Then choose "Permissions for this site". Go down to "Insecure Content", and choose "Allow".
This option may sound scary, but it isn't. It just means that the slither.io webpage is allowed to load content insecurely... which would be a problem if you were sending slither.io a password, credit card information, etc. But with slither.io, there isn't anything that a hacker could gain if they could intercept your connection.
This page last updated 27 Jun 2024