How to Revert to the Old Chrome Look and Fix Blurry Text on Windows
On Tuesday, Google released a new version of Chrome that slightly changes its look and feel. As with any change to this size, not everyone likes it. In fact, there is a fair amount of grunt about switching browsers, or at least reverting to the old Chrome look.
If you’re having trouble with the new Chrome (or just don’t like the way it looks), here’s how to get your browser back on track.
Reverting to Chrome Classic
Fortunately, it’s actually very easy to get Chrome’s user interface back to what it looked like last week. Just go to the page to switch experimental Chrome features by typing chrome://flags in the address bar and change the “UI Layout for Top Chrome Browser” setting from “default” to “normal”. After you click Apply and restart your browser, Chrome’s tabs and search bar will look the same as before.
To be clear, this does not completely revert Chrome to version 68. Some of the new features, such as finding answers to simple questions in the search bar, still work. Others, like the password generator, don’t. It’s also worth noting that this only affects the toolbar, tabs, and other items at the top of the screen. The “blank” tab still has a new search bar with rounded corners.
But why is the text vague?
Unfortunately, not all problems were purely aesthetic. Many Windows 7 and 10 users report that the Anniversary Update makes text blurry, causing eye strain.
Some users report that all the text is blurry, others say that the text on the toolbar looks fine, but the page text is blurry. Still others on Reddit report that text is blurred only when the Chrome window is maximized. Most reports indicate that the problem occurs when you set the text size to 125 percent, although there are conflicting reports on whether reducing to 100 percent will help.
On the google and reddit community forums, users are already working on interim fixes. The first and by far the easiest fix is to play around with your windows and text scaling to see if changing things helps. To do this, go to “Display” in Windows System Preferences and select the slider labeled “Resize text, applications and other items.”
If that doesn’t work, users are reporting that adding a launch parameter in Chrome changes the target field. On the Reddit and Google community forums, this made the problem easier for every user who tried this and reported it. Here’s what to do:
To add a setting, right-click on the Google Chrome app or shortcut and select Properties from the drop-down list. From the properties menu, select the shortcut tab and add the following line to the end of the text in the target field:
/high-dpi-support=1 /force-device-scale-factor=1
Then click “Apply” and you should be fine.
This is a temporary solution. Given the number of complaints, I expect Google to fix the problem soon, but that’s no reason to hurt your eyes – including you, gray text in Chrome’s new title bar .