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Having troubles viewing PDFs from your Chrome Browser?

Aron Washer avatar
Written by Aron Washer
Updated over 4 years ago

If you are seeing a black screen when trying to view a PDF, like the image below, you likely have a browser extension that is blocking it from opening.

Try without any extensions

You can easily confirm that the extensions are the cause of the problem by loading the PDF from the Incognito window. If the PDF loads correctly, one of your extensions is at fault.

To open an Incognito window:

On Windows, press "Ctrl" + "Shift" + "N".
On MAC, press "CMD" + "Shift" + "N".

Login and try to load a PDF. If it works, you now know one of your extensions is the problem.

Process of elimination

You can toggle your extensions on and off by heading to chrome://extensions/.

Toggle these off one at a time to see which one is stopping the PDF from loading.

Some reported extensions that are linked to this problem are:

  • McAfee Websafe

  • McAfee WebAdvisor

  • Grammerly

Keeping the troublesome extension

If it isn't feasible to turn off or change the extension, right-click the grey/black area where the PDF should be and click "Save as".

This will make the PDF become visible, rather than offer a means to save the file (another quirk of the extension). From here you can then save the PDF in the normal way.

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