Browser market share metrics (by StatCounter and NetMarketShare) clearly convey that Google Chrome has far outpaced its competitors. With a worldwide market share of more than 60%, it is indeed the most popular web browser. But with every good comes a bad.

And in case of this platform, it’s the long list of bugs and issue that plague the browser. Just yesterday, we highlighted how Chrome’s swipe to switch tabs feature is troubling Magic Mouse users. A mild horizontal scroll after hovering over a tab initiates a cycle of displaying other open tabs at a fast rate.

Mouse swipe triggering super speedy tab switching

And today, we stumbled upon another Google Chrome bug that leaves the text on web pages barely readable. Users report the text suddenly goes missing or flickers, appears completely scrambled irrespective of the website they visit. See for yourself:

GoogleChrome-missing-text-image2

Take a look at how a complainant words the issue along with photo proof:

The text on many webpages is missing most of the characters while other characters get cut off. This is not a pixelation issue related to ClearType as I have already tried that. To get text to appear, I have to highlight it with my mouse and sometimes even that doesn’t work. I have restarted the PC and the browser to no avail.

GoogleChrome-missing-text-image1

Another user explains the issue saying:

The text within all sites is missing or flickers in and out, as I scroll sometimes it disappears all together but if I place the mouse over it it will pop back up , sometimes it will not. I have cleared history, cookie and cache. reset Google but not uninstalled.

As far as we can see, this problem was reported on Google Chrome help forums back in March. Then a couple of months later, a Google employee dropped by, acknowledged this issue and asked users to share more information.

GoogleChrome-missing-text-expert-comment
Google employee’s response

However, nothing came after that. Users kept complaining and continue to do so till date. In between all this a workaround that has been given a green go by majority of those who tried is to disable hardware acceleration (in System section) in Advanced Settings in Chrome.

hardware-acceleration-option-inchrome-settings

So those of you who are facing this issue, can give this workaround a try. And don’t forget to let us know how it goes by dropping a comment below.

PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that mainly focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive,’ ‘breaking,’ or ‘curated’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.

Dr. Aparajita Sharma
1227 Posts

Currently, I am pursuing Ph.D (Psychology), and have been teaching the same for past four years. Coming to PiunikaWeb, I know it was a complete switch over, but the idea was appealing enough to put in all the effort it called for. My work primarily involves research. Oh, and yes, some of the photographs you see here are clicked by me. Overall, I am enjoying whatever I am doing, and hoping you’ll also feel the same reading all my articles. You can find me on LinkedIN.

Next article View Article

Google Drive not letting users play videos, throws 'allowed playbacks has been exceeded' error

Google Drive users have been dealing with an issue for years where they get an 'allowed playbacks has been exceeded' error when trying to play videos. And Google has still...
Feb 20, 2024 2 Min Read