Facing Google Chrome scrambled/garbled text issue? Here's a workaround you can try

Browser market share metrics (by StatCounter and NetMarketShare) clearly convey that Google Chrome has far outpaced its competitors. With a worldwide market share of more than 60%, it is indeed the most popular web browser. But with every good comes a bad.

And in case of this platform, it’s the long list of bugs and issue that plague the browser. Just yesterday, we highlighted how Chrome’s swipe to switch tabs feature is troubling Magic Mouse users. A mild horizontal scroll after hovering over a tab initiates a cycle of displaying other open tabs at a fast rate.

And today, we stumbled upon another Google Chrome bug that leaves the text on web pages barely readable. Users report the text suddenly goes missing or flickers, appears completely scrambled irrespective of the website they visit. See for yourself:

Take a look at how a complainant words the issue along with photo proof:

The text on many webpages is missing most of the characters while other characters get cut off. This is not a pixelation issue related to ClearType as I have already tried that. To get text to appear, I have to highlight it with my mouse and sometimes even that doesn’t work. I have restarted the PC and the browser to no avail.

Another user explains the issue saying:

The text within all sites is missing or flickers in and out, as I scroll sometimes it disappears all together but if I place the mouse over it it will pop back up , sometimes it will not. I have cleared history, cookie and cache. reset Google but not uninstalled.

As far as we can see, this problem was reported on Google Chrome help forums back in March. Then a couple of months later, a Google employee dropped by, acknowledged this issue and asked users to share more information.

However, nothing came after that. Users kept complaining and continue to do so till date. In between all this a workaround that has been given a green go by majority of those who tried is to disable hardware acceleration (in System section) in Advanced Settings in Chrome.

So those of you who are facing this issue, can give this workaround a try. And don’t forget to let us know how it goes by dropping a comment below.

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