How to Fix Screen Flickering in Google Chrome on Windows 10 Version 1809

The latest version of Windows 10 and the newest Google Chrome release seem to be an unfortunate mix of software for some users, as the browser is impacted by a super-annoying screen flickering bug that makes it completely unusable.

At this point, it looks like the issue is only experienced on Windows 10 version 1809, also known as October 2018 Update, when running Google Chrome version 73. However, I’m seeing reports that other versions of Chrome could be affected too.

A thread on the Google Chrome Help forums indicate that a potential solution to this glitch could be disabling hardware acceleration in the browser.

However, as many of the users seeing the screen flickering discovered, the hardware acceleration feature doesn’t seem to be in any way connected to the bug. So the problem resides in a different place.

A post on the said forums and coming from a Google Platinum Product Expert indicates that the screen flickering may be generated by a compatibility issue with one or two Windows 10 features. This also confirms that the problem is exclusive to Windows 10 and not happening on Linux and macOS.

Basically, the post indicates that the flickering is caused by the Windows Slideshow feature or by the automatic color selection in the operating system.

“At the moment, I don't know why these two settings cause your screen to flicker in Chrome. Once I know more, I'll let you know,” the post notes.

What’s important to keep in mind is that Google hasn’t yet officially acknowledged the bug, but since a fix already exists, there’s a good chance the development team is looking into it and a patch would be released soon.

So technically, the workaround is to disable the Windows Slideshow and the automatic color selection in the operating system. Here’s how to do both.

First and foremost, you need to head over to the Settings screen. For the slideshow, this is the path that you need to follow:

To do this, the Settings app is again the one that you need to use, so launch it and then follow this path:

For the time being, no other workaround seems to exist, so if you really insist on using the aforementioned Windows 10 features, there’s not much to do about it.

Google Chrome is currently the world’s number one browser on the desktop, and given that the adoption of Windows 10 also grows every month, there’s a high chance that this issue could hit a large number of users. However, judging from the number of complaints posted online, it’s not yet a widespread bug, though it goes without saying that Google should resolve it as soon as possible.

The next Google Chrome stable release is version 75, and it is projected to launch on all supported platforms on April 18. It remains to be seen, however, if a fix for this bug would be included in this update.