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Jeff Chandler

A Bug in Chrome 45 Causes WordPress Admin Menu to Break

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.

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95 responses to “A Bug in Chrome 45 Causes WordPress Admin Menu to Break”

  8. 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.

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  41. 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:

    [code]
    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); }’ );
    }
    [/code]

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  47. 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.

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  52. 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?

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  56. 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.

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  71. 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

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  74. 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 :)

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  75. 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.

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