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A Bug in Chrome 45 Causes WordPress Admin Menu to Break

Jeff Chandler · · 95 Comments

Within the last five weeks, several people have reported an issue in Chrome that breaks the WordPress admin menu. If you hover the mouse cursor over menu items in the sidebar, they’ll occasionally fall out-of-place.

Chrome WordPress Admin Menu Using Chrome 45.0.2454.85, I’m able to inconsistently reproduce the behaviour reported in the ticket. Through the process of elimination, users discovered Chrome is the software at fault and not WordPress.

The source of the problem stems from Slimming Paint which is enabled by default in Chrome 45. Disabling slimming paint fixes the issue.

To disable this feature, visit chrome://flags/#disable-slimming-paint in Chrome and Enable the Disable slimming paint option, and make sure the other two Enable options are disabled because they will override the Disable option.

If this sounds confusing, please refer to the following screenshot provided by Samuel Wood.

Disable Slimming Paint Options
Disable Slimming Paint Options

Chrome’s development team is aware of the issue and is working towards a solution that is marked for release in Chrome 47. Until then, users are encouraged to disable Slimming Paint until Chrome fixes the issue.

95 Comments

  1. Jeff Chandler

    Go figure, shortly after publishing this post, the Chrome Development bumped up the priority of the bug and a fix is likely come out before version 47 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=509179

    Report

  2. Matt Shaw

    This has been driving me crazy! Thanks for posting the fix.

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  3. ivica72

    Thx Jeff, it works for me :-)

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  4. Jeffrey

    Wow, I never noticed it until now. Yes, I can reproduce the issue with version 45.

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  5. nick6352683

    I thought my site was compromised somehow (corrupt files,etc…). One easy fix for me was to collapse the menu to icons, and then expand it again. Very annoying… .

    At least the Customizer is fine though !!!

    Report

  6. Jason Jersey (@degersey)

    I spent 4 hours on this today to find out it was Chrome. Errrr :(

    Report

  7. Keith Davis

    Thanks for the heads up Jeff and thanks for the solution.

    Report

  8. Samuel "Otto" Wood

    To disable this feature, visit chrome://flags/#disable-slimming-paint in Chrome and click the disable link.

    Note that this is slightly confusing here, because it’s bloody Chrome so of course it is.

    You actually have to “Enable” the “Disable slimming paint” option, and make sure that the other two “Enable” options are actually disabled, because they will override the Disable option.

    If you got a headache from reading that, you’re not alone.

    Just go by this picture of what it should look like instead:
    Cloudup qhfjldalkv4

    That’s how it needs to be. This will disable the problematic code in Chrome and allow the menus to render normally.

    Report

    • Kristi

      You actually have to “Enable” the “Disable slimming paint” option, and make sure that the other two “Enable” options are actually disabled, because they will override the Disable option.

      Yeah, that made me laugh pretty hard!

      Report

  9. mark k.

    yet another win for automatic updates. I wish I could say that my browser is different (firefox), but it isn’t :(. Maybe time to seriously consider using IE.

    Report

  10. Gwyn (@gwynf)

    Thank you! I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this for a month now. I ended up rediscovering Firefox… Perfect fix. Seriously. Thank you.

    Report

  11. Marcelo

    oh darn god. I was happy I’m not in the issues group, until I discovered my Chrome is stuch on version 44… now it will go to 45 when I restart it :(

    Report

  12. Jacob Schweitzer

    I use Chrome beta so I’ve had this issue for awhile now, very annoying. Thanks for posting this fix!

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  13. pabloliz

    This was driving me crazy

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  14. Mounir

    Hi, there is also an other fix which you can install on your clients’ sites and that’s a plugin at:
    https://github.com/raffjones/chrome-admin-menu-fix which has been provided by raffjones.

    I used it and it works.

    You should mention it in the article.

    Report

  15. Matthew Harris

    I’m using 45.0.2454.85 m (64-bit). I don’t see a second phase to disable and setting the first two flags as instructed doesn’t fix the issue.

    Report

  16. stephentx

    Now if they could just fix the constant memory sucking and crashes that also came with 45.0.2454.85. I upgraded to this version today and Chrome uses up about 1,000,000k every 2 hours which crashes the whole browser. Have to now use Firefox only again.

    Report

  17. blair2004

    i thought WordPress menu has a problem, thank for this…

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  18. Kyle

    Thanks for the solution!

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  19. Mike

    Thank you!!!! Was driving me crazy.

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  20. Adam

    THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! I almost resorted to using IE because this bug was driving me insane. You are my new favorite person today.

    Report

  21. Mike Clark

    Looks like they moved fast; mine (on the beta channel) just updated to “46.0.2490.13 beta-m” and everything’s working again in the admin sidebar.

    Report

    • Samuel "Otto" Wood

      No, they have not made any fixes yet. Chrome 46.0.2490.13 beta-m (64-bit) definitely still has the problem, at least it does on Windows 10.

      The problem is slightly random in nature. You don’t see it every time. You do see it quite a lot of the time though, it’s very reproducible.

      Report

  22. Jeff Larsen

    Thank You!

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  23. Lukas

    Thanks for this post! I wish I found it earlier.

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  24. awwwyisss

    OH MY GOD, THIS STOPPED ME FROM JUMPING OUT MY WINDOW.

    I’ll stop screaming now. Thank you

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  25. smartwpress

    Thanks a lot, you saved my day.

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  26. Luke Seven (@Luke7even)

    Thank you very much. Lovely

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  27. Tom Rodman

    Thanks for this post. Like many others, I was ripping (what’s left of) my hair out.

    Report

  28. Dave Chu

    I suspected Chrome, which often has partially baked additions crop up. So I checked Firefox, which works fine.

    Thanks for the additional confirmation. The true name of this might be Slimming Pain, then. :)

    Report

  29. Ricky

    Thanks for this, but it doesnt fix anything for me, has been driving me crazy.

    Report

  30. Allan

    Works like a charm, thanks for the tip.

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  31. Фёдор Зима

    Do not forget to restart your browser!!

    Report

  32. Lilian

    Now it makes sense.. thanks God I will finally fix it! Thank you! ;)

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  33. Mike

    Anyone know if this Chrome issue is affecting different versions of WordPress, or is this just the WordPress 4.3 release?

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  34. David Bell (@dwbell)

    Thanks Jeff, for a few hours I thought it was my sites! :)

    Report

  35. Tony Balthazar

    I thought it was just me too!

    Report

  36. Bigwas

    Chrome on my linux mint is fine.

    Report

  37. Carlos Pedreros

    Thanks for this!! Hours wasted

    Report

  38. Jack

    Thank you for this! After restarting my chrome, everything is now fine!

    Report

  39. John B.

    You are a life saver! This bug was annoying the heck out of me. Thanks for the tip.

    Report

  40. Ben Dunkle (@EmpireOfLight)

    Thanks! What the heck is slimming paint anyways…

    Report

  41. Manny Costa

    If one doesn’t want tell all the people that have access to wp-admin to disable “slimming painting” this code added to functions.php could be a work around until an official fix is released:

    add_action('admin_enqueue_scripts', 'chrome_fix');
function chrome_fix() {
	if ( strpos( $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'Chrome' ) !== false )
		wp_add_inline_style( 'wp-admin', '#adminmenu { transform: translateZ(0); }' );
}

    Report

  42. Chris

    Thanks Jeff, It was really annoying me. Back to work.

    Report

  43. Muslimah Web DesignHantaah

    bug fix or no bug fix this post saves me hours of troubleshooting time and frustration. Thanks a BIG bunch!

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  44. Josh

    Super helpful, thanks for the post!

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  45. Eric Vadeboncoeur (@evadeboncoeur)

    Thanks you! :)

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  46. Jeremy Myers

    Thanks for posting about this. It was driving me nuts. I thought I had broken WordPress! Glad to know it is a Chrome issue.

    Report

  47. Katrina

    This bug is indeed super annoying, but I have a question about your fix. If I disable slimming paint now, when Chrome releases the update will it return my slimming paint settings to normal? I prefer not to have any weird/obscure settings set to abnormal setting like this when it’s not necessary.

    Report

  48. Erica

    Thanks for the help….and the image! Enable – Disable, enable to disable, blah blah blah.

    Again, Thanks :)

    Report

  49. Brad

    Thanks Jeff,

    I thought I was losing my mind, but you have saved my sanity with your article!!!

    Report

  50. Judy

    Thanks for the post. I thought I had a virus in chrome. You did a great job with the instructions; making it super simple to correct this issue.

    Report

  51. Monkeehub

    Good spot sir! I assumed some rogue WP plugin was causing the issue and was about to hobble them all.

    Report

  52. Rob

    Thanks for posting this article, I’ve just started using Word Press and this has been driving me nuts! Simple fix when you know how!

    One this I noticed was there was only One enable option to change (double checked with a CMD + F) but it seems to have worked anyway. Just wondering if there is any reason you know of that would mean I am missing one?

    Report

  53. Matthias

    Thank you very much – WordPress works fine again :)

    Report

  54. Laurie

    Issue for me as well! I’ve been going crazy because I recently updated to Windows 10 and thought that was the problem!

    Report

  55. Johnny

    Thank you for figuring out this detail. Super annoying. Well composed post with screenshots and everything. Keep up the great work!

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  56. Ben

    Thanks for this! I noticed the menus, but on one of my sites I noticed that the pages were displaying incorrectly; elements were repeating and odd colors where interspersed. Once I implemented this fix, ALL of that went away and the site itself was displaying as intended.

    Report

  57. John Brandt

    Add me to the Mega Thank You list. I was/am going nuts! I thought it was the last version of WP that was the cause and about to send in a ticket.

    Report

  58. Colin

    It’s funny, from the WP forums I had only seen people with Macs complain about this – then it happened to me (Windows), was a little surprised…

    Report

  59. debra

    Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
    I was going crazy trying to work out how to fix this.

    Report

  60. Tamika

    Saved me from insanity, i thought my site was on verge of breakdown. Thanks so much for sharing this

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  61. Angel

    Thank you sooo much! Our office was in a bit of a pickle, you have saved us! :)

    Report

  62. Sean Scott

    Thank you. Working on a new site and it has been driving me crazy. I even reinstalled WordPress a few times. I should have tried a different browser as I never even thought it was chrome.

    Report

  63. Kathryn

    Thanks so much for the fix!

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  64. Vamsi

    Thanks a lot Jeff!!!

    I was losing my mind over this, thinking the problem was with my database. Tried almost everything and finally found this post. Thanks a ton buddy!

    Report

  65. Sueli

    Thanks!
    It was SO annoying!

    Report

  66. Samuel "Otto" Wood

    Note that the Chrome team has found and fixed the bug, and it will be in chrome canary tomorrow. However, it likely well not get pushed into chrome 45, but will be in chrome 46, in a few weeks.

    Report

  67. Horst

    Thank you so much. I expected it to be a chrome error because in firefox everything was alright. But I would have never found the real error itself. So you are the timesaver No. 1 this week!

    Report

  68. Bob

    I’m also seeing that when trying to add a new user the user is pre-populated with the admin information. The css fix doesn’t seem to address this error.

    Report

  69. Samuel "Otto" Wood

    Chrome update: They fast tracked the bug fix. It’s currently scheduled to be released in Chrome 45 (branch 2454) and Chrome 46 (branch 2490) somewhere within 1 week. The fix is in Chrome Canary (47) right now.

    Report

  70. Ferri Sutanto

    Ah apparently its chrome, not wp itself :D

    Report

  71. Nathan

    Thanks for the post!

    I was launching a website for a client this week, and right as I was supposed to hand the site off to them this started happening and I thought I broke something =/ Wasted like 3 hours troubleshooting and couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was going on

    Report

  72. David Gwyer

    Can confirm this is now fixed on the Chrome 45 – 2454 branch. Just updated and no more weird menus, yay!

    Report

  73. Hendrik

    And there is still the issue that a different (red) background for a menu item in the top admin bar is not displayed in Chrome. It does in IE.
    This is used in the lj-maintenance mode plugin.

    Report

  74. Remco

    Hi all! Hi Jeff! Thank you all for this post, the solution and the discussion. Yet…

    I’ve heard or read no one complain about Opera. The Browser. Yet, that’s the one I use, and the issue is exactly the same. I reckon I can wait till my face grows a 3ft beard till that be fixed, right? What do you reckon?

    Kindest regards from the Netherlands

    – – – – – – –

    Part 2:
    After having dealt with this for weeks (I mean, it’s not the end of the world) I’ve found an ugly but easy quick fix, for anyone who still experiences this:

    when your mouse is hovering over the WP admin menu, try zooming in (CTRL-+) and zooming back to normal (CTRL-0) again. That appears to set it all back into place for that moment.

    Yes. A workaround. Ugly. Stupid even. But it works :)

    Report

  75. Jay

    I began to use a WordPress theme called Customizr for a website two months ago but for reasons unknown my preferred browser Chrome (Version 47.0.2526.106 m) has crashed at least three times since then, which led to loss of hours of work. Ever since I switched to Firefox I have never experienced a single crash. A bit digging online turned up evidence that others have had or are having the same problem with Chrome.

    Report

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