Friends list & chat window solid black

[Zu]

After playing any game for roughly half an hour, either I check the Steam overlay or alt-tab out of the game (borderless vs dedicated full screen makes no difference) and see this:

https://i.imgur.com/2JYmETS.png

I can open the friends list through the taskbar icon and then open the specific chat window which I know is supposed to be there, but this about:blank chat window remains like it's its own thing.

I've tried toggling gpu acceleration for web views in the interface options, deleting the Steam web browser cache and cookies, toggling chat window + friends list docking in the chat settings, and updating my gpu drivers for good measure. I haven't tried running Steam as administrator for what it's worth.

The only solution is to exit Steam. I'm not on the beta by the way, and I last reinstalled Steam entirely back in July, after a W10 fresh start, so there shouldn't be years of corrupted files.


Valuable update:
I have found a way to reproduce this bug and prevent it. Separate post below.


1st of February 2023:
Just fyi: Pages 2-8 discuss a similar bug that was promptly hotfixed.

[Terminal Meltdown]

YES. This has been happening to me for 3-4 months. I just now got around to reinstalling windows 10 to see if it was Windows or Steam and it STILL does it.

https://i.postimg.cc/L63fwLyw/steam-case-blank-page-window.jpg

It's always the same about:blank? with a blank black window message.

[crunchyfrog]

There's a couple of things you can try that can cause this issue.

(1) Delete your steam files except the steamapps folder (containing all your games) and the steam executable itself. When you try to boot it up again, it will reacquire all the files, and if there was anything dodgy or corrupted in there it can fix it.

(2) As Steam uses a fork of Chrome, you can try disabling plug ins on Chrome (as a lot of people have issues with things missing and going wonky with plugins galore enabled), and again even deletion and reinstalling Chrome itself.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Terminal Meltdown:

Thanks for replying. This is a fresh install from last night and it's doing it already again. I don't use Chrome so that couldn't be it. This hasn't been a problem for 15 years and now since the middle of summer 2020 it's been doing it consistently.

Ah but many things use Chrome these days, so I wouldn't be so sure to discount it. It would only take another app to have a wonky or corrupt file and it'd cause this.

[Zu]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

(1) Delete your steam files except the steamapps folder (containing all your games) and the steam executable itself. When you try to boot it up again, it will reacquire all the files, and if there was anything dodgy or corrupted in there it can fix it.

I was about to believe this has been helping, but it happened again today because my isp had another hiccup and disconnected me for a few minutes while I was slaying some spire.

Connection issues or steam maintenance used to make chat and friends list unclickable with a nice blue headline like "No connection", then they decided to kick you out of friends instead and make you reconnect manually, and while this is still the case, I'm once again left with an about:blank where chat used to be until I end the steam webhelper process in task manager.

At least steam auto-reconnects if I do this, saving me a double click on its desktop shortcut.

Edit to clarify:
Blaming disconnects is likely false. It's much more likely that I simply had not opened the steam overlay before I noticed the disconnect and opened the overlay to doublecheck, accidentally causing the bug described in great detail below.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Zu:

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

(1) Delete your steam files except the steamapps folder (containing all your games) and the steam executable itself. When you try to boot it up again, it will reacquire all the files, and if there was anything dodgy or corrupted in there it can fix it.

I was about to believe this has been helping, but it happened again today because my isp had another hiccup and disconnected me for a few minutes while I was slaying some spire.

Connection issues or steam maintenance used to make chat and friends list unclickable with a nice blue headline like "No connection", then they decided to kick you out of friends instead and make you reconnect manually, and while this is still the case, I'm once again left with an about:blank where chat used to be until I end the steam webhelper process in task manager.

At least steam auto-reconnects if I do this, saving me a double click on its desktop shortcut.

Sadly, for whatever reason when you get outages or spotty internet performance, it appears Steam does like to corrupt files. It's been this way for as long as I can remember.

So that sucks and it's sod's law that would happen, but this is the only way to fix it., simply because you're effectively wiping the slate clean and creating new files.

[Zu]

Edited because none of the assumptions in this post were correct. See my post below.

[crunchyfrog]

I'm not sure about the userdata or what it contains. I've never noticed any difference but I could be wrong of course.

[Zu]

Significant progress today:
I've found a somewhat reliable way to reproduce this bug.

Most if not all of these matter:
- At least one chat window must be open, whereby the other person must be offline.
- The most recent message must be a youtube link, embedded as a media preview.
- The steam overlay must remember this chat window from an earlier session and it must be sufficiently thin. Neither height nor chat window dimensions on your desktop matter.
- Possibly, you also must attempt to "corrupt" this chat window by telling steam to remember open chat windows and leaving this window open before exiting steam while the most recent message is the aforementioned youtube thumbnail.
- While the "prepped" chat window is open, boot up any game and access the steam overlay. The overlay will attempt to fix itself but you will likely get alt-tabbed out of the game and see solid black about:blank windows where your steam chat windows and friends list used to be.

I asked a friend to follow these steps and he did manage to reproduce this bug using a video unfamiliar to me, which is the one thing that makes this bug inconsistent.
At best it's a 50:50 whether a specific embedded video causes this bug or not. Some videos cause this bug reliably, others never cause it.

Factors I can confidently rule out:
- The game you choose to boot up.
- The game's display settings such as full-screen, windowed, or resolution.
- The chat window's height on the overlay, as mentioned above.
- The chat window's dimensions and position on the desktop.
- The chat window's position on the overlay in-game.
- Deleting files where steam is installed, barring the ones responsible for chat, which I can't pinpoint. I didn't touch appdata either, but using one of the workarounds below is faster.

Workarounds:
- End the steam client webhelper task in task manager. This refreshes all chat windows and allows you to keep your game running.
- Keep your chat windows reasonably wide on the overlay. The break point is unclear.
- In the first place, do not have a chat window open before booting up a game, whereby the other person is offline and the latest message is an embedded youtube video. If you open such a chat window after booting up a game, it's fine.
- Leave 2-3 lines of text after the embedded media. Even "gl <enter> hf <enter> gg" works.
- Last resort: Disable media embeds in the chat settings.

Finally I have enough data to submit a satisfactory steam support ticket.

[LordRIB]

So this was January.... did anything come out of this? The answers obviously no. I been bouncing around this forum for awhile now and all of these discussions about the black chat windows just stops dead. Is Steam even looking at this problem? Its been going on for me for over a year. Does every single user have put in their own ticket to get an answer for this? Its obviously happening to a million users. And is STILL happening.

[Terminal Meltdown]

Still does it every day. Very annoying.

[Zu]

Originally posted by LordRIB:

Did anything come out of this? The answer's obviously no.

Ye. The cherry on top is that scrolling through chat by any means besides page up/down is a stuttery mess and it feels like a related bug happens even more frequently now.
Media embeds enabled, post a youtube video, chat freezes, you have to restart the app, lo and behold how steam somehow managed to confuse itself and post the video twice in a row.

Either disable media embeds or tiptoe around these issues for the sake of thumbnails.

Forgot to mention:
Nowadays this about:blank nonsense even happens when the other person is online.

[Sethioz]

same here ... been having this ever since steam FORCED users to use their new childish and autistic layout. It used to be possible to use older version and disable updates, but they FORCEFULLY prevents older version from working, so now we're all stuck on this broken trash. I constantly get those issues, either friends list or chat windows just appear as blank. whoever made this childish layout is brainless ape and should be fired, he/she has no business being a programmer.

[GWOP-W×TCH]

Did every possible thing to fix this. restarted. closed steam. ended processes. closed game that might have been causing it. now m y friend list and chats are just solid black. what a joke. this is what happens when your office is full of cliques who don't fix anything and roll out lazy attempts of half **** junk. The old steam chat had literally zero p roblems, n ow it's electron based which is beyond a joke. No fix for this in site and valve doesn't care since they've moved onto something else and consider this feature compelte.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by 3OOBLK-imok-:

Did every possible thing to fix this. restarted. closed steam. ended processes. closed game that might have been causing it. now m y friend list and chats are just solid black. what a joke. this is what happens when your office is full of cliques who don't fix anything and roll out lazy attempts of half **** junk. The old steam chat had literally zero p roblems, n ow it's electron based which is beyond a joke. No fix for this in site and valve doesn't care since they've moved onto something else and consider this feature compelte.

Tuesday maintenance has caused issues tonight, not the same issue as in 2020.

[Uldranth Tonitrum]

Same thing's happening to me just now. I've tried everything to fix this, but Nothing. I guess we oughta wait until this gets fixed.