What is this vertical black bar in Chrome on OS X?
September 24, 2020 8:59 PM Subscribe
In full-screen, on OS X in Chrome I have this vertical bar. It is not in the DOM, as I have selected hide element on the entire HTML tag. Extensions are not impacting it and shows up in Incognito mode. Sometimes it is on the top as in the screenshot, sometimes it is 3/4 of the way down. What is this?!
It doesn't seem to be impacting anything. I don't know enough about Chrome or native OS X apps to begin to debug the app itself but if someone wants to point out ways to debug this I have xtools and multiple other tools installed.
- Big Sur Beta 8, I don't feel like rolling back the OS to do further testing.
- Version 85.0.4183.121 (Official Build) (64-bit)
- Sometimes it is towards the top like in the screenshot, sometimes it is near the bottom. It appears to only have two states.
- Happens on all pages, including whatever the Intro or blank New Tab page is called.
- Cursor pointer appears OVER the black black so I assume this means it is definitely something Chrome is rendering.
- Has happened for the last 2 weeks or so that I noticed it. To be fair it is so inconspicuous especially when not viewing against a white background I could have just started noticing it.
I'm willing to provide any further bug reports. It appears Chrome may or at least used to use Cocoa and I have zero idea how to debug that. I see there's a pretty extensive Chromium page on it that looks arduous but I'm willing to try whatever as this is becoming a bit of a white whale for me.
It doesn't seem to be impacting anything. I don't know enough about Chrome or native OS X apps to begin to debug the app itself but if someone wants to point out ways to debug this I have xtools and multiple other tools installed.
- Big Sur Beta 8, I don't feel like rolling back the OS to do further testing.
- Version 85.0.4183.121 (Official Build) (64-bit)
- Sometimes it is towards the top like in the screenshot, sometimes it is near the bottom. It appears to only have two states.
- Happens on all pages, including whatever the Intro or blank New Tab page is called.
- Cursor pointer appears OVER the black black so I assume this means it is definitely something Chrome is rendering.
- Has happened for the last 2 weeks or so that I noticed it. To be fair it is so inconspicuous especially when not viewing against a white background I could have just started noticing it.
I'm willing to provide any further bug reports. It appears Chrome may or at least used to use Cocoa and I have zero idea how to debug that. I see there's a pretty extensive Chromium page on it that looks arduous but I'm willing to try whatever as this is becoming a bit of a white whale for me.
Response by poster: 1. All extensions are disabled.
2. Don't know what you mean by one per Chrome, it is always there in every window in the same place.
3. Default/Best for this display is set and not scaled.
posted by geoff. at 9:33 PM on September 24, 2020
2. Don't know what you mean by one per Chrome, it is always there in every window in the same place.
3. Default/Best for this display is set and not scaled.
posted by geoff. at 9:33 PM on September 24, 2020
In OS X on an iPad, I see a bar indistinguishable from that when I click on PDFs in my Google search results.
posted by jamjam at 10:50 PM on September 24, 2020
posted by jamjam at 10:50 PM on September 24, 2020
Re. pdfs, is it possibly something to do with this Google Scholar 'feature' going awry?
https://scholar.google.com/scholar/help.html#access
The link provides details for disabling etc.
posted by carter at 3:38 AM on September 25, 2020
https://scholar.google.com/scholar/help.html#access
The link provides details for disabling etc.
posted by carter at 3:38 AM on September 25, 2020
You're running a beta version of the Mac operating system, so it could be anything at this point. (I'm still running Public Beta 7.) I checked in Chrome and I can't replicate what you're seeing, but that doesn't mean much. Have you submitted feedback via the beta's Feedback Assistant app?
posted by emelenjr at 3:42 AM on September 25, 2020
posted by emelenjr at 3:42 AM on September 25, 2020
the fact that the bar isn't pure black makes me think it's chrome drawing something it shouldn't be... a lower-level rendering bug in the os would probably show up as pure black.
now that i think of it, it may not even be chrome drawing the bar. try this: hold down "shift" and "command", then press "4" to begin taking a screenshot. after the cursor changes to a crosshair, press the space bar to switch to window capture mode. in this mode, the cursor changes to a camera, and moving your mouse over a window highlights the entire window. now try moving your mouse over the bar. is the entire chrome window highlighted, or just the bar?
if the bar is highlighted separately from chrome, that means it's a separate window, possibly from a separate app. i'm not sure of a good way to show which app it's associated with, but maybe you can think of another app you have installed which has a window with that same shade of black.
if it's not highlighted separately, then (if you haven't done this already) try going to "advanced > reset settings" in chrome's settings and resetting it back to its factory defaults. it's possible there's some old configuration which is causing this...
posted by panic at 2:28 PM on September 26, 2020
now that i think of it, it may not even be chrome drawing the bar. try this: hold down "shift" and "command", then press "4" to begin taking a screenshot. after the cursor changes to a crosshair, press the space bar to switch to window capture mode. in this mode, the cursor changes to a camera, and moving your mouse over a window highlights the entire window. now try moving your mouse over the bar. is the entire chrome window highlighted, or just the bar?
if the bar is highlighted separately from chrome, that means it's a separate window, possibly from a separate app. i'm not sure of a good way to show which app it's associated with, but maybe you can think of another app you have installed which has a window with that same shade of black.
if it's not highlighted separately, then (if you haven't done this already) try going to "advanced > reset settings" in chrome's settings and resetting it back to its factory defaults. it's possible there's some old configuration which is causing this...
posted by panic at 2:28 PM on September 26, 2020
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posted by nickggully at 9:25 PM on September 24, 2020