Chrome 67: How to disable gray title bar on Windows 10

Starting with Chrome 67,  Google Chrome draws gray color for title bar and minimize, maximize and close buttons in the browser window on Windows 10, this applies to popups too. By now, you’ll have noticed gray tabstrip or toolbar in Chrome window. FIY, you won’t notice this  change other Windows versions such as Windows 8.1/8 and Windows 7. If you want to change or revert Chrome title bar color to old white, you can, here is how that can be done.

Chrome’s gray Title bar on Windows 10

Change Chrome’s Title bar color from Gray to White

This fix works

1. Visit about:flags
2. Search for ‘custom’ and for ‘Custom-drawn Windows 10 Titlebar’ and select Disabled

Note: Choosing default or enable, exhibits the same behavior.

3. Restart the browser to see the Chrome title bar with white color like before in regular window and incognito window.

Google redesigns the chrome://flags page

How to reset All Chrome Flags to their defaults

What the flag does behind the scenes? 

‘If enabled, Chrome will draw the titlebar and caption buttons instead of deferring to Windows. – Windows’. So the control of drawing titlebar has been taken over by Chrome on Windows 10.

If you’re using custom themes in Chrome (but not the default), you won’t notice any difference when you add gray or black theme, but if you install a white theme, you’ve to live with a custom-drawn title bar.

Bring back Classic Blue Theme to Google Chrome

How to Reset Your Theme to Default in Google Chrome

But

I’ve to say this:

Flags are experimental, may not last for long, we’re not sure whether Google will undo’s this change in future, we’ll let you know in this article when that happens.

Google bows to users Criticism, Re-enables old bookmark Manger in Chrome

As per our observation, the setting for custom-drawn Windows 10 Titlebar set to disabled in both Opera and Vivaldi browsers, we’re not sure whether these browsers honor this setting. And its not uncommon to see Opera and Vivaldi have their own flag pages and can be reached by visiting opera://flags and vivaldi://experiments pages in respective browsers.

What’s your take on this change?