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It was working fine yesterday, but today when I start Chrome, the app is flickering, and weird boxes are appearing on the home screen. When I navigate to any website, it fails to load all the way. Here's Youtube for example. I do a sudo apt upgrade pretty much everyday, and I don't recall anything that seemed harmful. I also tried uninstalling and reinstalling Chrome. It still behaves the same.

Youtube partially loading

maxutil
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  • Confirming this is an issue. For me it occurred after an update to some of the mesa libraries, and occurs when using an Intel embedded GPU. Using the NVidia discrete graphics doesn't have this issue. ```bash Errors: link failed but did not provide an info log ``` – vdp May 24 '23 at 20:49
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    Tracking here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mesa/+bug/2020604 – Dan Halbert May 25 '23 at 13:18
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    See this answer, which fixed the problem for me: https://askubuntu.com/a/1469146/27404. TLDR: delete `~/.config/google-chrome/Default/GPUCache/` – Dan Halbert May 25 '23 at 13:23
  • In my case there was no `Default` under `~/config/google-chrome` but I just used search and deleted all `GPUCache` directories inside it. – devius Jul 17 '23 at 08:25

5 Answers5

8

I had the same issues today (after a big system update).

This fixed it for me:

  • Delete the config and cache directories: ~/.config/google-chrome/ and ~/.cache/google-chrome/.

Then...

  • start chrome

  • sign in to google

  • in the chrome settings, re-enable synchronization with the gmail account to recover bookmarks and extensions, themes

Artur Meinild
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rockandroller
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    No need to delete the whole config if you don't have a gmail-backed profile to sync with. As I wrote in my answer, only the GPU/Shader cache related folders need to be deleted. – AsGoodAsItGets May 25 '23 at 09:09
  • Had this issue today after an apt upgrade (noticed "mesa" among the things being updated, so that's what brought me here). This worked for me. ty! – Matt Welke May 25 '23 at 14:06
  • I tried this and it worked. Thank you! I was about to do a full reinstall of Linux. – maxutil May 25 '23 at 21:30
  • It worked for me. But I keep having to do this every other week. The issue keeps coming back, so deleting the config isn't a permanent solution. – sayandcode Aug 05 '23 at 06:22
6

I didn't want to delete my profile and sync with gmail because I'm not using a gmail-backed profile and don't want to. So, following the recommendations by others, I just deleted all GPU/Shader cache-related folders under my ~/.config/google-chrome and it seems to be fine.

AsGoodAsItGets
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3

Google Chrome started acting weird to me today, showing garbled graphics, or no graphics at all. That seemed to affect images, icons, but also UI elements.

What solved it for me was disabling hardware acceleration (in Chrome's Settings, under the "System" menu). If your Chrome is unusable to a point where you can't access its settings, try launching Chrome with the --disable-gpu argument.

I never changed that setting before. I did apply updates to various Ubuntu-installed applications earlier. Maybe that pulled in something that broke stuff. I'm using Chrome version 113.0.5672.126 (Official Build) (64-bit) on Ubuntu 22.04.

Guus
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2

  1. export settings of selected extensions to a file (e.g. feedbro)

  2. in the chrome settings, disable synchronization with the gmail account

  3. exit chrome and make sure it's finished:

    $ sudo killall chrome

  4. delete the config and cache directories: ~/.config/google-chrome/ and ~/.cache/google-chrome/ .

  5. start chrome

  6. sign in to google

  7. in the chrome settings, re-enable synchronization with the gmail account to recover bookmarks and extensions, themes

  8. Load previously saved settings of selected extensions

  9. configure other extensions as before. chrome as well

if it doesn't work: try reinstalling graphics drivers and libraries mesa, vulkan etc and repeat the above

successfully tested on intel embedded gpu

Artur Meinild
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MMM
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1

This worked for me

I did delete the shader files, and it didn't fix the issue for me

There is a setting in the System tap that handles the hardware acceleration When I disabled this option, chromes windows started working properly for me

System Settings Toggle

Ruben Verster
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