When Google Chrome 26 was on dev.channel we’ve spotted the new context menus with white background and we’ve reported them here, which are now ported to stable channel. It seems most of users don’t like these white context menus, here is how disable them permanently and get back to old gray menu style with help of command line switch.
Before letting you know how to turn off those in Google browser, let me summarize the changes for you: Chrome settings menu has gone bigger in size and got white paint and context menu which appears when you right-click on page has also been changed to white color.
How to Disable new white context menus in Chrome 26
1. Right click on Chrome shortcut on desktop, select Properties
2. Hit the Shortcut tab, now in Target field at the end of “C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” after space add the following switch
--disable-new-menu-style
3. Click Apply and OK to add the change.
4. Now launch Chrome browser from the shortcut, you can see old menu style for both Chrome settings menu and context menu.
At present there is no other way than the procedure mentioned above to revert back to old menus in Chrome. IMO there is no way Google will drop them unless gets huge criticism and feedback on it from users.
Has the workaround mentioned above worked for you? do you think Google will ditch this UI style for menus and brings old styled context menus back? share your thoughts with us in comments.
Doesnt work for me. I hate this menus
please make sure you’ve added two single hyphens successively before “disable”.
Doesn’t work here (Windows 8 64-bit, Chrome 26.0.1410.43 m).
Two contrasting comments?.
Scratch that, it does work. Somehow the two single-hyphens (–) before “disable” got changed into a long hyphen (–) in your text… Using the two single-hyphens works.
My bad,seems WLWriter and WordPress both seems to convert two hyphens to dash automatically, now updated the post with words, hope it helps them.Thanks for letting me know Oral-B.
Doesn’t work for my xp (sp3) computer. Google, it’s bad enough that you read email to sell marketing. Now this? Screw you with barbed wire…
It is working but i had to rewrite the quotation marks.
This does not work for me, I do not use a default windows style shortcut, and the program launcher I do use doesn’t support command line switches. Also, I launch chrome a handful of different ways, and it would be difficult to find and edit all of the relevant configuration files.
Finally got it to work for me (XP Professional SP-3).
However, cut and paste does not work. I had to replace all of your hyphens with new hyphens including 2 new ones at the front end and now it works.
Thanks a lot for your help.
You’re welcome David, glad its working for you any how.
There are about:flags options available called “Enable touch events” and “Touch Optimized UI”. These are set to automatic, but setting them to Disabled may also provide the solution.
If I am right flags not available on Stable channel(?) since stable channel is used by most users around the world, but anyway we’ve heard those flags you mentioned working on dev and canary builds to bring back old menus. But anyway thanks for letting me about those flags Doru.
Sorry, it doesn’t seem to work. I’ve tried several times but still have the ugly white background.
Hey, it works now. I guess you should have made it clear that all open browser windows have to be closed BEFORE one tries to make the change. Anyway, thank you so much!!!
It doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried the copy and paste, I’ve tried typing it in by hand, restarting Chrome and my computer, and I still have the newer one. I use Windows 7 HP for a Dell Insprion.
Thank you. It worked on (Windows 8 64-bit; Chrome 26.0.1410.43 m) in case someone wants to know. I just had to type it manually and close every extension that was running in background.
You’re welcome Metroid.
Works like a charm, just use this if you paste
–disable-new-menu-style
Thank you for the tip, i was really frustrated by this new look of the menu.
I hope Google drops it. Soon.
you’re welcome Toni, and BTW I don’t think Chrome team will rethink on these menus and drop them.
Sir, it is not working for me.
Worked just fine for me:
(space)–(the restof the stuff)
You’re welcome Noctiel.
Awesome, works fine in xp. Google is really stuck on this boring, hard to read all-white look and it’s a killer on the eyes. They need to hire a new design team.
You’re welcome Nate seems everyone is hating new white menus. Thanks for your comment.
Thanks! Worked for me eventually but had to quit the background process of Chrome from the notification area in the bottom right hand side. Also needed a space before the two hyphens and quote marks
Thanks a bunch. I have been trying this now for 2 days and finally got it to work because your posted reminded me that feedly was keeping chrome running in the background.
I mentioned about space before the switch. Thanks for your comment bfg67.
Hate the new menus. Love your documentation of the fix. Thx!
Thanks for your words. You’re welcome Zim.
It worked for me. First I had to quit the background process of Chrome from the Task Manager. The final Target field should look like this:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” –disable-new-menu-style
NOTE:
If you’re having a hard time getting it to work, try one of few things:
– First: If you copy and paste it. Remove the dashes and re-add them back in. The dash character is different than what Windows recognizes as a dash.
– Second: Make sure you have two dashes before disabled.
– Third: When you close Chrome, wait about 2-15 seconds depending on the speed of your computer and how much you had opened. It might take time to fully close the background tasks.
– Forth: After closing Chrome, go into task manager and “Close Process Tree” on any Chrome.exe processes. This insures it’s completely closed.
Worked for me, the new menu style was very irritating!! Grrr…. It made me move my mouse farther to get the menu items that I wanted – which wastes time. Also takes up too much space on the screen. Dear Google – if it isn’t broken – and nobody is complaining about it – then LEAVE IT ALONE!! Thanks!!
This simply does not work. I don’t know why, I’ve tried it on multiple machines/use accounts.
This is cc22.
I don’t know why but the two hyphens looks like long one when you post here. So please disregard my previous post because doesn’t make sense.
Sorry
It happens same for all.
hey david – thanks for XP tip re hyphens. I was getting worried that chrome was going to treat me like a child or as an octogenerian with bad eyes. Why is the trend towards huge, confusing, space eating icons? Computer users are supposed to be literate you know.
It is sad when brilliantly effective software created by geeks is hijacked by corporate style management. Can’t wait for the new ‘google’…
finally got is worked. Thanks alot Venkat for your great work and then Brandon for your nice tips. I waited like a minute after closing Chrome and then closed everything related to chrome from the Task Manager, typed the “–disable-new-menu-style” instead of copy pasting and now its working. Thumbs up :)