ESPHome AP Captive Portal not opening; suspect DNS not starting (2026.5.0)

[pine pulsar]

Would anyone be able to point me in the right direction (or another channel) to seek help?
Opening a browser to 192.168.4.1 works, but no redirection for any other address
Also, message logging is non-existent (even on DEBUG)
Log stops after this message: [21:05:21.781][D][preferences:148]: Writing 1 items: 0 cached, 1 written, 0 failed