Google’s Chrome is one of the most-used browsers available at the moment, but this isn’t to say that it is perfect. In fact, Chrome has been notorious for having various issues such as high memory consumption. Another set of issues that has been plaguing users for a while is that it can sometimes display a black screen.
This doesn’t seem to be limited to any particular version of Windows that you are running, so there could be a variety of reasons as to why this might be happening. The good news is that there are several ways that you can actually go about fixing it, which you can check out in our guide below.
Disable Chrome Extensions
Due to extensions being made by third-party developers and not always Google, it can sometimes lead to issues where certain extensions might not be optimized for the current build of Chrome. This in turn can create problems, one of which is the black screen. To check if it might be an extension problem, try disabling them and see if the problem persists.
If it goes away, then you might need to go through your extensions one by one to find the culprit. Here’s how you can disable your extensions.
- Launch Google Chrome
- Click the Menu icon to the top right corner of Chrome next to your profile photo
- Go to More Tools > Extensions
- Click the toggles to disable them (they will no longer be blue)
- Close Chrome
- Relaunch Chrome to restart it
Disable Chrome Flags
One of the features of Chrome is that Google includes some advanced features for users who know where to look for it. This comes in the form of Chrome flags where users have the option to enable certain advanced features. If you have used any of these features before, you can try disabling them to see if the black screen problem goes away. This includes:
- GPU compositing on all pages
- Threaded compositing
- Do SHOW Presents with GD
- Launch Chrome and in the address bar, type chrome://flags/
- Scroll down and look for the three flags mentioned above
- Ensure that they are Disabled
- Close Chrome and relaunch it
Disable Hardware Acceleration
Another way to fix the black screen problem is to disable GPU compositing on all pages.
- Launch Chrome
- Go to Menu > Settings
- Scroll to the bottom and click on Advanced
- Scroll down further until you see “Use hardware acceleration when available”
- Click the toggle to disable it
- Close Chrome and relaunch it
Resize Chrome’s Browser Window
Sometimes resizing the browser window can solve the problem. All you need to do is drag the edges of the window around to a size you prefer. Sometimes this can make the problem go away, but it could be a temporary fix as the underlying cause could still be present and could make a return later.
Reset Chrome To The Default Settings
If all else fails, you might need to try resetting Chrome back to its default settings. This means that you will lose all the previous settings, but if it helps get rid of the black screen problem, it could be worth taking a look at.
- Launch Chrome
- Go to Menu > Settings
- Scroll to the bottom and click on Advanced
- Select “Restore settings to their original defaults”
- Click “Reset Settings” and you’re good to go
Filed in . Read more about Browsers, Chrome, Google and Windows.