Missing Toolbar Buttons

[malum]

The main toolbar buttons that appear in the upper right-hand corner of all windows will not appear in Brave (minimize, restore, & close). The buttons are still functional (I can click where they should be and the browser behaves correctly). This problem always happens to the Brave browser, windowed or full screen. It does not matter if I restart the application, reboot my PC, or uninstall and then reinstall the application. No other application shows this behavior, and there are no visible error messages.

Some relevant tech info:

• Running Windows 8.1, 64-Bit
• Running Brave Browser Version 0.63.55 Chromium: 74.0.3729.131 (Official Build) (64-bit) (its up to date)
• This behavior is observed with or without any extensions active or installed.

The only time this behavior did not occur is the moment I updated Brave to its current version. The tab that I used to update the browser restored the buttons, but only for that tab, and only in that moment. As soon as I switched to another tab, the buttons were gone, and when I returned to the tab I used to update Brave, they were gone from there as well. Relaunching Brave after that point had no effect.

Is there a sure-fire way to fix this problem?

[Edit] Clarification, since I updated to the latest Brave version, the missing toolbar buttons will appear 1 time at the launch of the Brave browser. The moment I leave the homepage or open another tab, the buttons disappear again. If I start a second instance of the Brave browser while missing buttons in the first instance of Brave, the second instance will immediately be missing the control buttons without having to leave the homepage.

[sriram]

I am not sure I understand the issue correctly. You are not able to see the minimize/maximize-restore/close buttons? and they appear one by one when you hover over them? Would you be able to screen record this?

[malum]

The buttons to not appear if I hover over them. Their functions exist if I click the mouse over where they should be (if I guess the position correctly). Here is a picture of the issue:

Here is what it should look like (how it looks when I first start Brave Browser)

As you can see (and I forgot to mention) the blue taskbar at the top changes to black to coincide with the lost of the buttons.

[malum]

Still hoping to find a solution to this… Anyone?

[sriram]

In you first screenshot is Brave the active app or some other? I guess you are using a custom theme on Windows.

[malum]

Brave is the active app. The black bar will remain whether or not Brave remains the active app.

I am using a custom theme (using a custom background image caused Windows to profile my theme as custom). I don’t see why that should make a difference, but I’ll try changing it to a default theme and see what happens.

Thanks for your replies.

[Edit] Changing the theme back to a Windows default and restarting the Brave app made no difference in behavior. The black bar will still eventually show up and cover the control buttons. I have noticed that it only activates on some websites and not others, and it doesn’t matter if they are bookmarked or navigated to manually.

[Mattches]

@malum,
Very strange behavior – not sure I’ve seen this before.
Do Private windows display the same way? Any differences at all?

If you don’t mind, could you humor me by disabling Hardware Acceleration and relaunching? I’ve never see HA issues present in this way – but I also find that disabling it solves new and more varied issues all the time so it’s definitely worth a shot.

Settings --> Advanced --> System --> Hardware Acceleration

[malum]

That did it! (disabling HW acceleration) I tried the private window first, the behavior was the same.

If it helps narrow down the issue, here is the GPU info:

• GTX 1070
• Driver Version 430.39

Will disabling HW acceleration like I have done likely to break some website functionality?

Thanks for your help.

[Mattches]

Will disabling HW acceleration like I have done likely to break some website functionality?

Nope! You should be fine. If you’re running in-browser games or editing HQ/UHD video content you may see a slowdown in performance but honestly I haven’t had anyone report that. You’ll probably forget it was ever on