Users with non-Google Sanity accounts not visible in real-time presence

This is an interesting issue with presence indicators (the feature that shows which users are actively editing in Sanity Studio). While Sanity Studio does have built-in real-time presence awareness that shows who's working on content, there are a few things that could cause some users to not be visible to others.

First, check your Studio version

The most common cause of presence issues is running an outdated version of Sanity Studio. Presence features have been improved over time, so I'd recommend upgrading to the latest version:

npm install sanity@latest

After upgrading, restart your dev server and have everyone refresh their browsers. The current version is Sanity Studio v4, which requires Node.js 20+.

Verify everyone is in the same project

This might sound obvious, but double-check that all team members are actually logged into the same Sanity project. You can verify this by having everyone check the project ID in their Studio URL or in the sanity.config.ts file.

Check browser compatibility and caching

Presence features rely on real-time WebSocket connections. Have the two users who aren't visible try:

• Clearing their browser cache completely
• Using a different browser (Chrome/Edge/Firefox)
• Disabling browser extensions that might interfere with WebSocket connections
• Checking if they're behind a corporate firewall or VPN that might block WebSocket connections

Authentication method shouldn't matter

The fact that the two invisible users signed up with Sanity accounts (rather than Google SSO) is likely coincidental. Sanity's presence system works the same regardless of authentication method - once you're authenticated and have project access, the presence features should work identically.

Test in production Studio

If you're running sanity dev locally, try having everyone access your deployed production Studio instead (if you have one). Sometimes local development environments can have network quirks that don't affect production.

Network connectivity issues

Since presence requires persistent connections, check if those two users have:

• Stable internet connections
• Network restrictions that might block WebSocket connections
• Corporate proxies that interfere with real-time features

If none of these steps resolve the issue, I'd recommend reaching out to Sanity support with details about your Studio version, browser types, and any console errors the affected users might be seeing. They can investigate whether there's something specific about those user accounts or your project configuration causing the problem.