why are disabled extension icons showing up in gray?

by

did chrome get an update or am i bugged some how.

is this some option i can adjust - i don't want extensions i have
installed yet disabled to have icons showing on my chrome bar,
and i don't want to keep uninstalling and reinstalling extensions
just because i don't want to see them disabled on my toolbar.

thanks /u/zeaga2 : **Right click each extension icon and hit "Hide in Chrome Menu"**
**upon clicking "hamburger" 3-line icon you will see them grayed out at window top**

41 thoughts on “why are disabled extension icons showing up in gray?”

  5. Hey, me too! Weird. I just Googled this to find the solution.

    Edit: Right click the button and hit “Hide from Chrome”

    It’s not a permanent solution (since it won’t automagically toggle depending on whether it’s disabled or not) but it works for now

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  7. So it looks like Google has offered us an option when right-clicking any of these previously hidden icons to “Hide in Chrome Menu” – which does what it says (unfortunately). It now just moves the icon to the top of the Menu (Hamburger Icon). So now we have to have these previously hidden icons in the Chrome Menu I guess – they are just hidden from the main UI. Weird! I have three rows of these icons 🙁

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  8. I can see the benefits of this, though. I have had a problem multiple times where an extension for some reason stopped working or got disabled automatically and I didn’t notice.

    With this change I will actually notice it and can do something about it.

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  10. I used to have some extensions stay in the corner of the address bar with the bookmark button, like super auto refresh and the button to disable css with RES, now they’re all stuck with all the other extensions. >:|

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  11. A quick way to fix this is to just drag your address bar to the right until it pushes all of them onto your menu; quicker than clicking each of them if you have a lot of them.

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  13. I’ve been putting up with this for a week was starting to think I was the only one as nothing showed on a Google search

    Edit:

    They stopped allowing icons to show in address bar, they stopped addons going into the overflow menu, and instead moved them to the hamburger menu.

    [Horrible ux](https://i.imgur.com/txs3Hc4.png)

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  15. Is there a Way to hide these unnecessary Icons that are in the Addressbar and Chrome Menu? They just clutter things up.

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  18. This update change seems silly. If they wanted to make accessing your extensions easier, then they should of made the Manage Extensions menu option easier to access and see. Instead of having it buried under More Tools, just have Extensions be an option of the hamburger menu’s initial main list. This method of making an icon for every extension installed is just cumbersome and ugly. They are using a messy way to fix a problem that probably didn’t need fixing.

    As it is now, there are a needless amount of icons that serve no purpose due to many of them being passive, background extensions. Many of witch don’t even have options, so there is no point to having the icons at all. Whether I can hide them or not in the hamburger menu doesn’t change this.

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  19. I hide the disabled extensions in the hamburger menu, which is ok I suppose, and go about my merry way. But they’re all back again if I close Chrome and reopen it. Fortunately, I only have 5-6 to hide so not too bad, but would be a proper nightmare if there were a lot to deal with.

    Also, I have the Clacks Overhead extension. Not working any more as it’s no longer sitting in the address bar 🙁

    I hope this is a glitch and not an ‘update’

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  21. I have been a Chrome user for over five years now and consider it to be the best browser choice by far.

    This is gonna make me go back to Firefox.

    EDIT: [Apparently this awful excuse of a “feature” is designed to help us detect and remove extensions we don’t recognize.](http://chrome.blogspot.com/2016/01/new-year-new-chrome.html) Remember when the Chrome interface was designed to be the clean and toolbarless alternative to IE and Firefox?

    Let’s look at my extensions and whether they actually need a button, shall we?

    1. Application Launcher for Drive – Handling so that I can double-click local copies of Google Docs files being synced by the Drive app and have them open in Chrome. Works in the background, doesn’t need a button, now has a button.

    2. Google Dictionary – Lets me double-click words for quick definitions. Doesn’t need a button, has a button.

    3. Google Docs Offline – Syncs my Google Docs in the background so I can edit them without an Internet connection. Doesn’t need a button, now has a button.

    4. Google Keep – Notetaking. Actually could use a button, but for some reason it doesn’t get one.

    5. Reddit Enhancement Suite – Tweaks for Reddit. It used to have a context-sensitive button to disable subreddit styling that only appeared in the address bar when on Reddit. Now it has a huge permanent button for no apparent reason.

    6. Various Trend Micro extensions – Most of these are disabled, but the one I have on automatically blocks suspicious URLs. Doesn’t need a button, has one anyway.

    7. uBlock Origin – My adblocker is the only button I’ve had on the toolbar for many years now, so that I can easily disable it if it’s breaking a page. That’s the one button I actually use.

    I run a pretty light Chrome install. Imagine the people with several dozen extensions. The ~~Google advertisement~~ new New Tab page was bad, but this may be a deal breaker for me.

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  22. I thought my Chrome borked up or something- can’t believe this is intentional. I’m glad I only get two rows when I hide all icons, but this is a really dumb implementation. I use [SimpleExtManager](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simpleextmanager/kniehgiejgnnpgojkdhhjbgbllnfkfdk) to enable/disable extensions, and when I disable extensions, they just reappear on the toolbar grey’d out (instead of being out-of-sight), forcing me to relocate them again. This is just another downgrade IMO, and I hope they include a feature to hide certain extensions completely from the menus.

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  23. Disabled extensions don’t show up in the hamburger menu. If u go to manage extensions and actually uncheck the enabled checkbox it is no longer in the hamburger menu. Also extensions show up grey I’d they can’t be used in a particular tab (new blank tab) for example won’t have ads so ad block appears grey.

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  24. It doesn’t display disabled extensions for me (the ones that I installed but unticked in the chrome://extensions/ page), however it does display icons for extensions that were hidden before.

    Does it actually display icons of disabled extensions for you guys? That sounds like a bug, since it doesn’t do that for me. Or maybe they have changed it since the post was written? I have around 20 extensions installed but icons are displayed only for the 5 I have enabled.

    I agree it seems like a step back though.

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  25. Awful change. Please revert this. Some extensions I use like IPvFoo, SPDY indicator and RSS subscriptions belong in the address bar.

    I’m really bummed with this change. Seems like a good time to try out other browsers.

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  26. [What the fuck is up with these dual scroll bars in the Material Design extensions page.](http://i.imgur.com/m6sHjcM.png)

    At least none of my icons are greyed out. But the icons are so tiny I can’t see the number of elements, say, uBlock Origin is blocking. What was wrong with the old way? :/ They made the tabs headers too big and the URL/nav bar too small so the extension icons are downscaled to ugly proportions (at least for me).

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  27. I didn’t like it for the first 3 minutes, but I like it now!

    Any icon I don’t use that often I don’t have to see on the toolbar, but now they’re only a click away. I don’t have to go back into settings and re-enable the button.

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  28. why are they showing up at all? the only one that used to show up was ublock origin, and now ALL of my extensions are on that stupid bar

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  30. This makes chrome look very cluttered.

    TIP: if you right click and hide the icons, They will be moved to the hamburger menu.
    TIP 2: no more address bar extensions, they’ve all been moved to the side or the hamburger menu if you hide them.

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  31. Why can’t extension placement settings be stored in chrome sync? This is horrible. I have almost 32 extensions right now, and i have 5 computers that I have to do this on.

    Why would they think it’s a good idea to show disabled extensions? Seriously.

    Oh well, better get started…

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  32. Alright what the fuck is this, Google? I thought this was a bug, this is an awful design choice. This is really making me consider Firefox again.

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  33. 1. Google Chrome team did not announced anything about this update. So first time I saw it, I decided that it is some bug in Google Chrome, and reinstalled it… twice!
    2. Google Chrome team did not informed extensions developers that they’re going to disable [pageAction API!](https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/pageAction). So now we have hundred of popular extension that does not work, users are getting angry and extensions developers receiving negative feedbacks.
    3. Google Chrome team still did not updated [pageAction API!](https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/pageAction) documentation. So it still says that you can “Use the chrome.pageAction API to put icons inside the address bar.”.

    They’re so stupid and unresponsible. Google behaves just like one big peace of sh..t

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  34. really hate this addition, i use a few plugins that use extensions in the browser bar which are added where the regular extensions are, and not in the actual browser bar, javascript error notifier and bookmarks manager.

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  35. Thanks to vuze update. It reboot my chrome with lots of weirdness including this. so I blamed Vuze and I’ve been removing software, formatting, upgrading my OSes since 6 hours. normally the hamburger menu in Chrome is green when there is an update. I don’t remember it was green lately.

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  38. Agree 100%, but what’s odd as well is that I am using the beta, and this change didnt show up until they rolled it out to stable.

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  39. You can drag the right side of the address bar to show/hide icons from the right side.

    Also, fuck this UI change. The Chrome team is absolutely terrible with UI usability. It doesn’t even feel like an actual team is making these changes! It’s like it’s just this one guy who made this his special project and always wants to add these “cool” and “helpful” features, but never tries looking at things from a user’s perspective.

    I’m on ChromeOS, so I can’t even switch back to Firefox. I just have to deal with all of these icons clogging up my menu. 🙁

    Reply

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