Immediate Fix
The fastest way to resolve Slack screen flickering in Chrome is to disable Hardware Acceleration. This feature offloads graphical tasks to your GPU, but often causes rendering conflicts with the Slack web interface.
| Step | Action |
|---|---|
| 1 | Open Google Chrome and click the three vertical dots (Menu). |
| 2 | Select Settings and click on System in the left sidebar. |
| 3 | Toggle off Use graphics acceleration when available. |
| 4 | Click the Relaunch button to apply changes. |
After Chrome restarts, log back into your Slack workspace. The flickering should be eliminated immediately as the browser now uses software rendering for the UI.
Technical Explanation
Slack is built on the Electron framework, which utilizes the Chromium engine. Screen flickering typically occurs when there is a mismatch between the Chromium rendering pipeline and your Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) drivers.
When “Hardware Acceleration” is enabled, Chrome attempts to use the GPU to render CSS animations and transitions. If your GPU drivers are outdated or the browser’s hardware abstraction layer encounters a bug, it results in “screen tearing” or rapid black flickering.
Alternative Methods
If disabling hardware acceleration does not solve the issue, the problem may lie within your local cache or experimental browser features.
Update GPU Drivers
Outdated display drivers are a common culprit for browser-based flickering. Use the following command to check your current driver version if you are on a Linux environment, or use the Device Manager on Windows.
# For NVIDIA users to check driver status
nvidia-smiAdjust Chrome Flags
Sometimes specific rendering backends cause issues. You can try forcing a different “Choose ANGLE graphics backend” setting.
Navigate to chrome://flags in your address bar. Search for “ANGLE” and try switching the setting from “Default” to “OpenGL” or “D3D11”. Restart the browser after each change to test stability.
Clear Chrome Cache and Cookies
Corrupted local storage files can cause the Slack web app to glitch during updates. Clear your site data specifically for Slack to ensure a clean slate.
| Target | Shortcut/Path |
|---|---|
| Clear Data | Ctrl + Shift + Delete |
| Hard Refresh | Ctrl + F5 |
Disable Smooth Scrolling
In some cases, the “Smooth Scrolling” flag conflicts with Slack’s infinite scroll mechanism. Go to chrome://flags/#smooth-scrolling and set it to Disabled to see if the flickering stops during navigation.