Since November 13, 2019, some users of Google Chrome reported their browsers going blank, referred to as the White Screen of Death. This was soon followed by the browser crashing. Affecting many internet-dependent enterprises, business owners and employees alike raised queries on Google support forums. And Google was swift to respond!
Why did Google Chrome crash?
The reason behind the crash was an experimental feature for the browser called WebContent Occlusion. The feature was in beta for about five minutes with no reports of issues.
The purpose of this experimental feature was to decrease resource usage in Chrome by suspending tabs whenever a user moved other application windows to the foreground, thus treating the Chrome tab as a background task. However, once the official update was rolled out, many systems, especially those running Chrome on Windows “terminal server” environments and on Citrix servers, faced the White Screen of Death.
In all the environments mentioned above, the issue arose from the fact that the tab was unloaded instead of being suspended, hence, resulting in the appearance of the White Screen of Death.
How to fix the Google Chrome crash?
Google has rolled back the update and has recommended affected users to update and relaunch the browser.
In the event, the problems still persist, or the update isn’t available, the issue can be fixed by visiting Chrome://flags.
Once done, disable the following –
- chrome://flags/#web-contents-occlusion
- chrome://flags/#calculate-native-win-occlusion.
While the fix is a quick one, the update has left many worried. As the IT and other internet-dependent businesses took a hit from this update, admins from these enterprises are raising a petition with Google to let users turn off all experimental flags for Chrome in the future.
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