How To Fix No Title Bar Color In Chrome 67 On Windows 10
Microsoft has released a routine update for Windows 10. Google has just seeded Chrome 67 to the stable channel. While both these events seem unrelated, they seem to have resulted in no title bar color in Chrome 67. It’s not clear who’s at fault here; Chrome or Microsoft. That said, the fix is pretty simple.
Windows 10 Fix
Open the Settings app and go to the Personalization group of settings. Select the Color tab and for just a few seconds, change the default accent color to something, anything, different. Check if Chrome starts showing color on the title bar. If it does, then the problem is solved. If not, try changing the wallpaper as well, and using the automatic accent color feature. If neither solves the problem, proceed to the Chrome fix.
Chrome Fix
Open Chrome and enter the following in the address bar.
chrome://flags/#top-chrome-md
Open the dropdown next to this flag, and select the Refresh option. Use the Relaunch button to restart Chrome (save anything that you need to before you do). When Chrome restarts, the color on title bar should be back.
Cause
You might have noticed that over the past few versions of Chrome, Google has been changing the browser’s design. It’s adding a more Material look to it. The change has been slow coming with the Settings page, the Downloads page, and the History page getting an overhaul first.
With Chrome 67, the new Material design is added as something users can enable. For some, it might already be enabled and that is what is causing the clash. It seems likely that this is a Chrome bug and not something to do with Microsoft but this isn’t the first we’re seeing of a design overhaul in Chrome and nothing has ever broken before. Regardless, changing the value of the Chrome flag should definitely fix the problem. You can return the flag to its previous value once the bug is resolved.
The timing of this bug coincides with a Windows 10 update and it’s confusing for quite a lot of users who don’t know what might be the root cause of the problem. It seems more likely to be a Chrome problem when you consider the fact that only the browser is affected. The browser updates silently in the background so while you may not know when it updated, it definitely did. Users likely think this has to do with Windows 10 though because the truth it, the OS still has bugs, and its updates generate new ones all the time.
