Do this if Chrome shows a black bar at the bottom

Martin Brinkmann
Aug 7, 2018
Updated • May 2, 2019
Google Chrome
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I don't know how widespread the issue is but user reports on Google's official Google Chrome Help forum indicate that some Chrome users see a black bar at the bottom of the screen when using Google Chrome.

The issue was first reported on April 25 by a user who wrote "When in Chrome, there is a black horizontal bar across the bottom of the screen that I can't get rid of".

The bar sits at the bottom of the browser user interface and hides certain information that Chrome displays there. Any content that gets downloaded is displayed in the area and the black bar overshadows it so that it cannot be interacted with according to the user.

chrome black bar

The issue has been ongoing with recent Chrome Stable releases affected by it. Google Community Specialists suggested a number of things including running in Incognito Mode, creating a new user, running the Chrome Cleanup Tool, running a virus scan, or even reinstalling Chrome, but none fixed the issue according to users affected by it.

Some users reported that disabling hardware acceleration helped fix the issue but this was not the case for everyone who experienced it and the issue came back at least once for a user.

You can try disabling hardware acceleration by opening chrome://settings/ in the Chrome address bar, scrolling down and clicking on advanced, and toggling "Use hardware acceleration when available" to off under the System category a bit further down the page.

Users could try and install driver updates for the video card if available.

There is a workaround that helps users 100% of the time, however. You can get rid of the black bar for the session by entering fullscreen mode and exiting it again. Just tap on F11 to enter Chrome's fullscreen mode and F11 again to exit it.

If you experienced a black bar in Chrome it should be gone by the time Chrome returns to normal display mode.

It is interesting to note that the issue appears to affect other applications such as VLC or Firefox as well as some users reported that. Not all users revealed the operating system used on the machines they experienced the issue but those who did ran Windows 10 systems.

Since Chrome is not the only program affected, it is likely that the issue is either related to display drivers (a combination of hardware and drivers), or a Windows-specific issue as no user on Linux or Mac has reported the issue yet.

Update: Another solution has been found that you may want to give a try if the system has an Intel HD Graphics adapter. Right-click on the Intel HD Graphics icon and select Display. Choose the Scale Full Screen option and make sure Override Application Settings is checked.

Now You: Have you been affected by black bars in Chrome?

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Do this if Chrome shows a black bar at the bottom
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Do this if Chrome shows a black bar at the bottom
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Reports on Google's official Google Chrome Help forum indicate that some users see a black bar at the bottom of the screen when using Google Chrome.
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Comments

  1. Hina said on June 24, 2021 at 9:22 pm
    Reply

    Having this issue but not only on Chrome:
    -Running Windows 10
    -Black bar shows about two inches from the bottom of the monitor, disappears when the active window is cropped high enough to not show that spot
    -The bar does not show on my screensaver
    -It happens across all applications, so far I’ve tried Chrome, Medibang Paint, and Discord; It still shows on every app when I am in full screen mode/have the window at full size

    The trick describd in the article has not helped, so any assistance is appreciated.

  2. Tahlia said on April 27, 2021 at 10:14 am
    Reply

    I have recently got this similar issue but it covers the whole top section where the search bar, tabs, and bookmarks bar appear, I cannot click the close button either, and if i click and drag randomly, my desktop folders appear as if I were dragging them around, slightly translucent over the black.

  3. Anonymous said on February 4, 2021 at 2:34 am
    Reply

    This happens with MS Edge as well, seems to be a chromium issue.

    this happens when i open a word document from within edge (after downloading it) without saving it first

  4. Anonymous said on August 7, 2020 at 8:28 am
    Reply

    Disabling my Theme also worked!

  5. Remco said on July 14, 2020 at 1:27 pm
    Reply

    This solved the issue on my side! Thanks :-)

    Update: Another solution has been found that you may want to give a try if the system has an Intel HD Graphics adapter. Right-click on the Intel HD Graphics icon and select Display. Choose the Scale Full Screen option and make sure Override Application Settings is checked.

  6. Anonymous said on February 5, 2020 at 11:58 am
    Reply

    It does happen on Linux. Ubuntu Budgie 19.04, Chromium 79, AMD Wani graphics

  7. Phil said on January 23, 2020 at 3:20 pm
    Reply

    I’m an IT consultant. I currently have 2 customers with this issue.

    -Both have 2 monitors
    -Both can temporarily fix the issue with F11
    -Both have intel graphics (but several here have AMD so it’s not likely brand specific imo)
    -Both have Win10 1909 with up to date graphics and all windows updates applied
    -I did not try the refresh rate trick because both users wear glasses and did not want to mess with their eyes.

    I believe this is a Chrome bug interfering with the display driver. If you actually kill Chrome in the background all the other programs that were affected should no longer be affected.

    What is required here is to send an actual error related to this to Google. Just reporting it does little good if they can’t reproduce it at their end. Thus far, I have not been able to find an actual error related to this bug.

  8. Anonymous said on January 15, 2020 at 3:25 pm
    Reply

    Amazing, the F11 trick worked! This happens to me regularly, but today the black bar was more of a black box taking up almost half of the screen. Thank you so much for this!

  9. Anonymous said on December 11, 2019 at 2:27 pm
    Reply

    I love Google. Thanks for the information!

  10. Anonymous said on November 28, 2019 at 8:40 pm
    Reply

    Thanks, turning off hardware acceleration did it for me

  11. Rene said on November 4, 2019 at 12:25 pm
    Reply

    Have the issue here as well. Dual monitor system and only happens on one monitor. Last week it was the left (1st) monitor, now it’s the right one.
    Moving the browser to the other window solves the issue (while it’s on the other screen), so it doesn’t seem to be Chrome related. Doesn’t happen with other windows though, so it’s a bit confusing.

  12. Tom Jones said on August 29, 2019 at 12:46 pm
    Reply

    I currently have a HP ZBook with HP Thunderbolt G2 docking station and dual HP monitors.
    It happens quite frequently. Some times the black bar is on top of the screen, other times at the bottom. It varies in size.
    On Chrome, the bar is black. On IE and Edge, the bar is grey, but same size.
    It is always on my right monitor and no other programs are affected.
    I had a Lenovo laptop before with docking station and dual monitors. Same problem.

    F11 does work, but it sucks to always have to press F11 every time this happens!

  13. Kate Ayrton said on August 23, 2019 at 9:48 am
    Reply

    AMAZING! Sorted it right out. That has been annoying me for MONTHS. Intermittent, would usually disappear with a reboot. Only to come back later!

    THANK YOU!

  14. Melissa said on August 21, 2019 at 4:25 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much! This has been happening more and more recently at work, and it’s been getting in the way of doing my job quickly. F11 worked!

  15. Anonymous said on August 16, 2019 at 9:02 pm
    Reply

    F11 did the trick. Thanks so much!

  16. Anonymous said on August 13, 2019 at 3:28 pm
    Reply

    Thanks! This worked. It was very annoying.

  17. JULIE MORRIS said on August 9, 2019 at 6:43 pm
    Reply

    Update! Had to come back here becuase the black bar appeared again, and the settings for the Intel display were still as above, so to fix now on my HP Windows 10 laptop, I pressed f4 and connect just to PC screen again, and the problem cleared up. Thanks again!

  18. Angela P Smucker said on August 3, 2019 at 11:20 pm
    Reply

    My F11 key isn’t cooperating but I tried just clicking on the top right symble to get full screen mode and that didn’t help. I also looked for my HD graphics icon, but it seems like I don’t have one. It doesn’t come up on a search of my computer.
    What next?
    Angie

  19. Anonymous said on August 2, 2019 at 2:21 pm
    Reply

    Problem SOLVED by your fix – “Update: Another solution has been found that you may want to give a try if the system has an Intel HD Graphics adapter. Right-click on the Intel HD Graphics icon and select Display. Choose the Scale Full Screen option and make sure Override Application Settings is checked.”

    THANK YOU!! Phew.

  20. Renata J Cummings said on August 2, 2019 at 1:41 am
    Reply

    I had the same issue and clicked full screen mode and then exited full screen and it was fixed.

  21. Anonymous said on August 1, 2019 at 11:51 pm
    Reply

    “Just tap on F11 to enter Chrome’s fullscreen mode and F11 again to exit it.”
    A million thanks.
    This problem was killing me, and out of all the complex “solutions” that didn’t work and various other mis-diagnoses, yours was perfect.

  22. Derrick Reyes said on July 23, 2019 at 11:48 pm
    Reply

    If you go to the display setting for your monitor, change your resolution to any thing, and keep changes. Then change your resolution back to recommended and keep the changes.

  23. Heather Wasserman said on June 27, 2019 at 9:21 pm
    Reply

    F11 worked for me! Thanks!

  24. Samuel said on June 26, 2019 at 11:48 pm
    Reply

    Up.
    I had the taskbar stuck on another screen, and it took exactly the same space as a black bar on the monitor where my Chrome window was displaying. After fixing the taskbar issue so that it hides automatically, the black bar in Chrome still appeared. If I restored the Chrome window to a different size, the black bar disappeared, but as soon as I maximize it, it reappeared again… After a while, the height of black bar grew, so it became really annoying.
    Entering and exiting full screen (F11+F11) worked. Thanks!

  25. Phillip Smythe said on June 25, 2019 at 12:32 am
    Reply

    Thank you.

    F11 fix worked.

    Also have Intel and checked that box for good measure.

  26. Carl Nixon said on June 13, 2019 at 9:12 am
    Reply

    Re: The update about scaling

    My bottom area can be black one day but white the next day, so I’m not 100% convinced this the same issue (but it is very close).

    I don’t have an Intel graphics card I have an nVidia which has its own Control Panel. If you go to Adjust Desktop SIze and Position > Scaling and select “No scaling” it seems to fix the issue. It has been working for 2 days on my system

  27. Anonymous said on June 10, 2019 at 10:48 pm
    Reply

    Worked perfect, thanks for the quick fix!!!

  28. Anonymous said on May 28, 2019 at 6:32 am
    Reply

    Thank you so much for the F11 trick. I had the issue on my old computer and thought maybe was to do with driver. But after installing my complete new setup with two new screens and it STILL happened, I figured it was something to do with Chrome and Windows 10.

  29. bill said on May 22, 2019 at 10:21 pm
    Reply

    There seems to be a trend here. I get a white or black bar frequently and I have two monitors. The monitors are in different orientations. Does anyone here get this with only one monitor? Just updated Chrome and this bug is still present. Shame on Google. I heard the new firefox version is quite good.

    1. Chris said on August 30, 2019 at 7:28 am
      Reply

      Two monitors here. Right now I have a black bar at the bottom of Chrome, but if I drag Chrome to the other monitor, the problem disappears. Drag it back and boom – black bar.
      F11 does nothing for me today.

  30. Jay said on May 22, 2019 at 2:39 am
    Reply

    Yes. This is an annoyance – a sloppy release by google.

  31. Anonymous said on May 20, 2019 at 7:48 am
    Reply

    I had the issue as well, i am using 3 screens and it only affected one when I’m trying to maximise it on that particular screen.

    So I went ahead to play around with the display options, moving the position of the screen (relevant to other screens) and changes it back fixed the issue. I guess changing resolution and back also works too.

  32. Anonymous said on May 15, 2019 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    updating the drivers worked.

  33. Craig Bond said on April 30, 2019 at 10:04 pm
    Reply

    Yep, had the same issue. The F11 fix worked like a charm. Hope it continues to work!

  34. Matt said on April 22, 2019 at 4:08 pm
    Reply

    This worked for me. Thank you!

  35. Carly Darbouze said on April 22, 2019 at 3:02 pm
    Reply

    Thank, it work for me.

    I was becomming crazy about that black or whie ( sometime it white).

    I have windows 10 pro.

    So thank.

  36. Sam said on April 12, 2019 at 5:06 pm
    Reply

    I came here last month and even commented, but I was having this issue again today, and F11 wasn’t working.

    Did what Anonymous on 3/22 said and changed the window scale then back and that solved it. Thanks!

  37. Andy said on April 12, 2019 at 2:35 pm
    Reply

    I work as an IT field tech, and last week one of our customers showed me the problem described above on his second display. It was affecting Chrome and Acrobat Reader. After checking the video drivers and trying a few different things, I changed his second monitor’s refresh rate from 60 Hz to 59 Hz in the Advanced Display properties for the second monitor, and the problem disappeared. Then just yesterday I came across this problem with another customer, but unfortunately they did not have the option to change the refresh rate so we weren’t able to apply the same fix. If you do have the option to change the refresh rate, then give it a try. If the screen goes black when you make the change and doesn’t seem to come back then just wait a few seconds later and your screen settings will go back to what they were before. Pretty sure this is some kind of display settings related issue so check your display settings and see if any changes may resolve the issue for you. HTH.

  38. Tracey said on April 6, 2019 at 12:25 am
    Reply

    Thank you so much – this has been driving me nuts. Before this, I was having to reboot every time I wanted to get rid of the band!

    Also agree with Anonymous 04/04/2019 it only ever happens on one of my screens too.

  39. Anonymous said on April 4, 2019 at 3:32 pm
    Reply

    I have had this problem, F11 does correct it. However, I have also noticed this. I have two screens, it only happens on screen 2. Never on screen 1.

  40. Anonymous said on March 30, 2019 at 5:57 am
    Reply

    Or sometimes you accidentally hit the minimize button and didn’t know it.

  41. Laura said on March 29, 2019 at 4:28 pm
    Reply

    It worked! Thank you!

  42. Anonymous said on March 22, 2019 at 9:18 pm
    Reply

    I’ve had this happen off and on for months, and was looking for a better fix, and came across this site. If other programs are doing this same thing as Chrome, then an alternative I’ve found to fix for all programs is to open Windows Settings > Display > Scale and Layout.

    Change size to 125% (for example) and then change it back to 100%. Fixes it for me on other programs and Chrome.

    I’m also running Windows 10 on AMD video card.

    1. Anonymous said on May 15, 2019 at 6:58 pm
      Reply

      Thank you!

  43. Anonymous said on March 21, 2019 at 1:33 pm
    Reply

    Happens to me with Chrome and Edge; running Windows 10. Sometimes the bar is white, sometimes black.
    F11 fixes the problem for me for Chrome, but not for Edge. Since I’m mostly using Chrome, that’s not a big issue.
    Thanks for the tip!

  44. Mrs. Kathie Thomas said on March 21, 2019 at 2:21 am
    Reply

    This just happened to me today. Never before but F11 did the trick. Thank you.

  45. David said on March 21, 2019 at 12:07 am
    Reply

    Thankyou. I’ve had the problem and fixed it with F11 then F11 again.

  46. Ijaz Ahmed said on March 19, 2019 at 11:58 am
    Reply

    It’s working :-)

    Thank you very much lalay di jan :-)

  47. Marcus said on March 14, 2019 at 10:45 am
    Reply

    i had this issue on my work computer running windows 7 pro and with a amd radeon R7 videocard.
    it affected chrome and my server terminal window.

    but i basicly installed the latest radeon drivers and that worked for me.

  48. Krystina said on March 13, 2019 at 2:33 am
    Reply

    I had this issue, so it helped! Used the F11 option. Worked great!!!

  49. Nathan said on March 12, 2019 at 5:25 pm
    Reply

    Running Windows 10 rev1809 on a Dell Optiplex 390 with an NVIDIA GeForce GT710. Had this problem with an AMD video card installed thinking it was a video card problem. Swapped out video cards and continue to have the problem. F11 is a good workaround, but not ideal.

  50. Sam said on March 5, 2019 at 3:02 pm
    Reply

    This was happening to Chrome on one of my two monintors. If I dragged Chrome to my left monitor, it was fine. If I dragged it to my right monitor, the black bar would appear. Strange. So it must be some sort of driver issue.

    F11 worked. Thank you so much!

  51. GL said on March 2, 2019 at 8:25 pm
    Reply

    Worked for me.

  52. Mary Chapmon said on February 27, 2019 at 3:37 pm
    Reply

    I have a black bar on Chrome and a white bar on IE. It only happens on my main monitor. When I drag a screen to my second monitor, I can see the full screen. Drag it back and the bar reappears. None of the fixes have worked for me, so far. I would love to know if anyone finds a permanent solution to this one.

    1. Nick said on December 10, 2019 at 1:24 am
      Reply

      i had a similar issue and found that if i adjust the display resolution on the effected monitor if fixed it for me.

  53. Anonymous said on February 18, 2019 at 4:29 pm
    Reply

    Great!!

  54. Phi Wagi said on February 18, 2019 at 1:21 pm
    Reply

    Hey i had this issue. I noticed it while surfing on youtube and thought it may caused by youtube. Then i saw the black bar is not only on youtube so i was searching in google and found your article. F11 x2 fixes it for me but i’ve to do it everytime. Sometimes it’s a white bar instead of a black one.

    I have AMD GFX, i guess thats the reason, but who knows ^^

  55. Britelle Humfrey said on February 12, 2019 at 5:09 am
    Reply

    I have this issue in Chrome (running Windows 10) but only one 1 of my monitors! I have 2 screen. If i have Chrome open in 1 screen it displays fine but when I move it over to the other monitor the black bar is there. Very strange. It’s a new problem – Chrome has worked fine on both monitors previously. The F11 trick worked for me. Remains to be seen if I have to keep doing it… weird….

  56. Sean said on January 30, 2019 at 5:08 pm
    Reply

    I didn’t have this issue until this week. I just started getting the same thing BJ is getting with the Black or White bar that takes up about 30% of the bottom of the Chrome screen. I hit F11 and it fixes the issue. I tried the Chrome Cleanup Tool and turning off hardware acceleration. Neither of those two fixed the issue. I guess for now I will have to hit F11 two times to fix the issue when it appears until I find a permanent fix.

  57. Rohan said on January 24, 2019 at 10:15 am
    Reply

    “You can get rid of the black bar for the session by entering fullscreen mode and exiting it again. Just tap on F11 to enter Chrome’s fullscreen mode and F11 again to exit it.”

    Fixed the issue, thanks a lot

    1. A user said on May 17, 2019 at 7:09 am
      Reply

      Thanks!!!

  58. Kauri said on January 4, 2019 at 7:55 pm
    Reply

    I’m getting a black bar on the bottom of the screen, but it’s thicker than shown here (though the thickness is varying). F11 worked for a minute, but it’s back. Move the window from one screen to another also worked once. The thing is, it’s not just a bar; When I click on it, it brings up the window that’s directly behind the affected Chrome window..

    1. BJ said on January 9, 2019 at 3:44 pm
      Reply

      I am having the same issue as Kauri. Black or white bar takes up about 30% of the screen from the bottom. Clicking on it activates the window behind Chrome. I tried reinstalling Chrome, didn’t help. I reset the theme which worked for a few minutes, then the black bar appeared. I turned off hardware acceleration, and the black bar turned white again. Fullscreen did nothing for me. I sent a bug report to Google, but who knows if they even look at these things…

  59. Orgaza said on December 14, 2018 at 5:27 am
    Reply

    I’m affected.

    It happens in Chrome. It goes away if I close and re-open the application. I’ll try F11 next time.

    Sometimes it also happens if I open an email saved to a folder on my PC. It doesn’t appear on the Outlook inbox screen, just in the opened email. Weird.

    I’m running Windows 10.

  60. Zezerrian said on December 13, 2018 at 4:04 pm
    Reply

    I am affected, well, the wife is. We both run Win10 and F11 did not resolve the issue for me. I have yet to try the other methods. This has not been seen on any other program, microsoft office word or powerpoint, as of yet.

  61. Jenn said on December 11, 2018 at 8:37 pm
    Reply

    Brilliant! Worked! Thanks!

  62. Anonymous said on December 6, 2018 at 10:55 pm
    Reply

    worked, thanks

  63. astampf said on October 31, 2018 at 11:38 am
    Reply

    F11 full-screen method worked, thanks!

    1. Gurmail Bath said on March 14, 2019 at 6:39 am
      Reply

      yes that worked for me as well. is this going to be an ongoing issue?

  64. R said on October 22, 2018 at 12:03 am
    Reply

    Yep, I’ve had this problem on both Chrome and VLC – a black bar shows along the bottom. When viewing videos in full-screen mode, in both VLC and in Chrome, that black bar blocks the controls so I can’t see the pause/play/slider controls. To get around this, I’ve got to exit the fullscreen mode and restore VLC into a smaller window to be able to see the controls again.
    The F11 full-screen method works with Chrome.

    1. r2 said on March 22, 2019 at 9:24 pm
      Reply

      That worked for me too, such a simple fix.

      1. me2 said on September 11, 2019 at 3:38 pm
        Reply

        me too. thanks

  65. Richard Allen said on August 7, 2018 at 6:19 pm
    Reply

    “Have you been affected by black bars in Chrome?”

    No I haven’t seen that. But, until very recently, in Chrome Dev, if I had the zero copy rasterizer flag enabled all of the buttons for the flags would have a black background when clicking on the button. Which made seeing the choices like Default, Enabled, Disabled, whatever, impossible to see. Black text on a black background doesn’t work very well. I think it was the last Chrome Dev update when that was fixed.

    I’m using Win7 Pro x64 with a Nvidia GPU.

    1. Anonymous said on April 22, 2020 at 9:08 pm
      Reply

      Yes I have been facing this problem almost everyday and Followed the instructions of F11 and F11 again. It works. Thank you so much.

    2. Richard Allen said on August 7, 2018 at 6:40 pm
      Reply

      I was just thinking that maybe it was a black background with no text. I could guess and click on different options and then see on the button if it was what I wanted.

      The last Chrome Dev update was to v70 but the problem might have been fixed with the last v69 update.

  66. pHROZEN gHOST said on August 7, 2018 at 3:34 pm
    Reply

    I have not seen the issue on my Lenovo ThinkStation S30 with Chrome, FF, VLC or any other software.

    OS: Windows 10 Pro (x64) Build 17134.167 (1803/RS4).
    Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB GDDR5.
    Driver Version: 15.200.1055.0

    It would be interesting to hear from people having thei issue. Specifically, what hardware, OS, video chip and driver version. This could help narrow down the issue.

  67. Yuliya said on August 7, 2018 at 12:43 pm
    Reply

    I run Firefox, VLC and Chromium on Windows 7 with an Nvidia GPU. Never had this issue, be it with desktop composition enabled or disabled.

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