Over the past few weeks, I noticed a black semi-transparent overlay on my Facebook page in Chrome. It was annoying.
I cleared my Chrome browser cache. Rebooted my laptop and Chromebook. Checked my plugins, but couldn’t identify any specific causes.
Troubleshooting mode set in. I had to find out what was going on.
The black overlay screen didn’t display in Chrome on my mobile devices. And it didn’t display in Firefox, so it seemed the issue was specific to the Chrome desktop browser.
It took me a while, but I found a workaround to get rid of the black overlay. If I clicked my mouse anywhere on the screen, the black screen disappears.
But why did I have a black overlay screen in the first place?
What’s Causing the Black Transparent Overlay Screen in Facebook?
It didn’t take me long to learn other Facebook users had the same issue with a black screen.
And I found out the cause. Facebook was trying to display a notification message, asking if you wanted to turn on desktop verifications in Chrome.
But if you’re using Chrome incognito mode, the message won’t appear. Instead, a black transparent overlay displays on Facebook.
The reason why the notification message won’t display?
Chrome’s incognito mode doesn’t support push notifications.
Further investigation led me to the Chromium open source project, where I learned the development team has the issue listed as a priority 1 bug.
How to Get Rid of the Black Overlay Screen
I found a quick workaround to get rid of the black screen by clicking the screen.
It would be a lot nicer if Facebook would display without me needing to take extra steps each time I opened it.
While Facebook users have reported more than one way to resolve the problem, here’s what worked for me:
- In Chrome non-incognito mode, type chrome://extensions in the address bar and select Enter
- In the list of extensions, disable your privacy extension (Disconnect, AVG PrivacyFix, Adblock). Keep this tab open, you’ll return to it in a few steps. If you don’t have a privacy extension installed, go to the next step.
- In a new Chrome tab, log in to Facebook
- Choose Allow or Block from the pop-up message that displays in the upper left of the page
- Refresh your Facebook page to confirm the black overlay no longer displays
- Return to the tab with the list of extensions. Enable your privacy extension.
You should now be able to use Facebook in incognito mode, without a black overlay.
If the steps I described don’t work for you, check out some of the alternative solutions in the Facebook Help Community message.
Have you encountered the black overlay on your Facebook page? What steps did you take to fix the issue?
did exactly this and it worked! thank you so much because just recently, whenever i clicked anywhere, the overlay wouldn’t go away. frustration ensued. thanks again for posting this!
Hi Alice,
Glad it worked for you! From what I read online, other people found different solutions, but this was the easiest to do. That overlay is frustrating! I hope the developers at Chrome can figure out a way to resolve the issue soon!
OMG, Thank you! I use incognito mode all of the time and the black overlay was driving me crazy! I followed your instructions to the letter and it worked like a charm. Thank you again.
Hi Kim,
You’re welcome, Kim. I’m glad to hear you were able to remove the black overlay. I was frustrated when the black overlay kept showing up on my Facebook.