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Samson Goddy
Samson Goddy

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ChatGPT Looked Broken in Chrome But Fine in Safari, Here’s the Fix

#chatgpt

I ran into a weird issue where ChatGPT/Codex looked completely broken in Chrome, but rendered perfectly in Safari.

That difference was the first clue.

Safari runs on WebKit. Chrome and the Codex desktop app run on Chromium/Electron. So this wasn’t a macOS display issue. It was something inside Chrome.

What was happening

The UI in Chrome looked off:

  • Composer/input area was oversized or misaligned
  • Shadows and layout felt wrong
  • Suggestion cards were floating in the wrong place

Same page in Safari looked completely normal.

First thing I tried

I launched Chrome with a clean temporary profile:

open -na "Google Chrome" --args \
  --user-data-dir=/tmp/codex-chrome-clean-profile \
  --disable-extensions \
  --disable-gpu \
  --disable-features=UseSkiaRenderer,CanvasOopRasterization,Vulkan \
  --force-device-scale-factor=1 \
  https://chatgpt.com/codex
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Everything rendered correctly there.

That immediately told me this is not a website issue, it is a Chrome profile issue.

Why that worked

That clean launch removes a lot of variables:

  • fresh profile
  • no extensions
  • no cached site data
  • no weird flags
  • no scaling issues

So the problem had to be one of those.

Fixing the real Chrome profile

Instead of sticking with the workaround, I cleaned up my main Chrome setup.

Reset zoom

Cmd + 0
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Disable extensions

Go to:

chrome://extensions
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Turn everything off, reload ChatGPT.

If it fixes it, turn them back on one by one until it breaks again.

Reset flags

Go to:

chrome://flags
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Click:

Reset all
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Restart Chrome.

Clear ChatGPT/OpenAI site data

Go to:

chrome://settings/siteData
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Search and delete:

  • chatgpt
  • openai
  • codex

Restart Chrome and log in again.

What not to do

The clean profile works, but it forces low-quality rendering because:

  • GPU is disabled
  • scaling is forced to 1
  • rendering features are turned off

Good for debugging, not something you want long-term.

What actually caused it

Most likely one of:

  • broken Chrome profile state
  • corrupted site data
  • extension conflict
  • bad flags
  • scaling or zoom issue

The key signal was simple:

Safari works
clean Chrome works
normal Chrome is broken

That means the problem lives inside Chrome, not the app.

If your UI ever looks “off” in Chrome but fine elsewhere, don’t overthink it.
Test a clean profile first. It will save you a lot of time.

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