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I want to turn on the feature where whenever I hover over a hyperlink and in the bottom lefthand corner it shows a light blue hover tooltip about where that link goes.

It looks like that since some days this earlier always-on feature is missing (Compare "Turn off the link hover statusbar in Google Chrome ")

Why do I want to turn it on? It's annoying to me to not see the URIs I'm going to request. I am distracted as I work not knowing those.

I really do care where a given link goes and wish I could turn that feature on again, even if I have to install a Google Chrome Extension (well I hate installing superfluous extensions, so better not and just give the flag or option name for that feature).

So, is there a fix to turn the amazing link hover tooltip feature on?

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  • 9
    It's off for me. I'm missing it and I have no clue how it turned off.
    – hakre
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 8:50
  • Trying with disabling extensions, and it first worked (see answer below) but not the problem is here again and even disabling all extensions didn't make it any longer.
    – hakre
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 10:46
  • 4
    it happens again. rapid pressing like insane the F5 key reloading the current page brings it back for some moments but most often once it has faded out from the refresh it's gone again. This is a total disaster and renders the browser for an educated users nearly unusable for guided navigation.
    – hakre
    Commented Aug 25, 2013 at 14:13
  • No link-hover-status is suspect since links are prime espionage targets. It's coinincidental cover, and it looks real bad.
    – user982671
    Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 1:41
  • it disappeared for me on the latest Chrome Canary today :-/
    – Simon
    Commented Mar 22, 2016 at 22:35

8 Answers 8

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+50

The official bug thread mentioned in Raveren's answer has been updated - several people, including me, have fixed this problem by disabling hardware acceleration (direct link to settings: chrome://settings/search#hardware%20acceleration):

  • Open Chrome Settings
  • Select "Show Advanced Settings"
  • Scroll down to "System"
  • un-check "Use hardware acceleration when available"

This worked for me, and is consistent with several problems I've had with both Google Chrome and various flavours of desktop Linux running on older (graphics) hardware.

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    This worked for me to get my popup status bar back. And when I turned the setting back on, just to test, the status bar was still working. So try unchecking it, restarting Chrome, rechecking it, restarting Chrome, and see if your status bar works now.
    – Kurt Hutchinson
    Commented Feb 23, 2014 at 16:08
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    Thanks, helped me as well. By the way, faster way to get to the needed Chrome option is to use Search in their Settings: i.imgur.com/AWyUUQp.png
    – stansult
    Commented Mar 6, 2014 at 2:30
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    …or for this specific case simply use direct link like that: chrome://settings/search#hardware
    – stansult
    Commented Mar 6, 2014 at 2:38
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    Clearing (unchecking) the "Use hardware acceleration when available" box did NOT fix the bug in my 2 instances of Chrome (Windows 7 64bit Ultimate > Chrome 33.0.1750.146 m, and Windows 7 64bit Ultimate > Virtual PC > XPMode > Chrome 33.0.1750.146 m). Which made me test further and post the superuser.com/questions/623505/… "Dragging the affected Tabs out of the window restores the URL target in the status bar" workaround on this page.Versailles, Sun 09 Mar 2014 18:08:30 +0100
    – Michel Merlin
    Commented Mar 9, 2014 at 17:05
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    Unfortunately, sometime after I left my above comment, I noticed that checking/unchecking this box and restarting Chrome would only fix it for a while, like @Rudie said.
    – Kurt Hutchinson
    Commented Mar 11, 2014 at 14:27
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Dragging the affected Tabs out of the window restores the URL target in the status bar

The bug (hovering an URL FAILS to trigger, in the bottom left corner of the tab, a temporary partial Status bar showing the target of that URL) has been narrowed with precision by "liam.bro..." on Sun 23 Feb 2014 17:10:41:

unveiled the cause: making a selection in a drop-down list triggers the bug in all the tabs in the current window

Whence an effective workaround: in the affected window, select all the tabs minus at least one (see Select and Move Multiple Tabs to a New Window in Chrome), and drag them out (thus creating a new window) or into another existing window: all the tabs at once recover their temporary partial status bar (for unknown reason, dragging ALL the tabs in a window doesn't work).

A few samples where to check it:

Note: Google most often pays just gimmick-attention to users' feedback, never really read their bug reports or suggestions, often closes or even deletes the forum threads involved (thus following the same path as Microsoft, and eventually the same fate). In this case, Google has closed the Issue 345698 to anyone who would have an improvement, whence my inability to post there, and my posting here instead.

Versailles, Sun 09 Mar 2014 17:22:20 +0100

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    Genius solution! The bug is marked "FIXED," but this behavior still exists. Move the broken tab to a new window, done.
    – Eric L.
    Commented Jun 2, 2015 at 21:08
  • Still broken, as of version 49.
    – wurtel
    Commented May 20, 2016 at 7:32
  • This worked for me initially, but after a few minutes, the problem returned.
    – CryingCyclops
    Commented Jan 23, 2017 at 1:07
  • "CryingCyclops" Mon 23 jan 2017 01:07:05 GMT « This worked for me initially, but after a few minutes, the problem returned ». Could you post a more detailed account of what you did exactly and what happened exactly? For me the URL target in status bar doesn't disappear any more, even today when redoing the test in my Answer above (« ...hover a few links and see the target; then top of... »). Please bring a precise case where the status bar and URL target disappear, and don't come back by moving the Chrome tab out of its current Chrome window. Versailles, Tue 24 Jan 2017 11:14:00 +0100
    – Michel Merlin
    Commented Jan 24, 2017 at 10:14
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    I've never had a problem with the URL not showing in the status bar until today. I found this question about it. The accepted solution didn't work for me. (It didn't make sense to me, either.) However, this solution did. The URL status bar wasn't showing for links in any of the tabs I had open. Luckily, Chrome lets us select and drag more than one tab at a time, so I did that to fix all the tabs at once.
    – Mr. Lance E Sloan
    Commented Jan 14, 2022 at 20:41
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I found the problem.

This is the official bug thread for this issue:

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=8663

People mention some mouse-behaviour altering application and I found my problem in using 4t-min http://www.4t-niagara.com/tray.html that does something simmilarily unusual.

In a nutshell, the problem lies in 3rd party apps, not chrome itself: you should find which application blocks mouse hover and disable it.

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5

Restarting chrome brought it back for me.

Entering the following url will reload chrome without losing your open tabs. Their state may get reset, and any "added to desktop, windowed" tabs will not reopen, but you probably don't use those anyway.

chrome://restart

Credit: @richvdh

My Chrome Version:

Version 43.0.2357.65 (64-bit)

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    simple and effective. Worth noting that you can restart chrome by entering "chrome:restart" in the URL bar, and it will preserve your tabs for you.
    – richvdh
    Commented Oct 23, 2015 at 13:24
  • On Ubuntu Linux I've found that updating parts of the system (presumably parts Chrome depends on) can sometimes cause Chrome to stop displaying the status bar. Restarting Chrome fixes the issue.
    – Laurence Gonsalves
    Commented Mar 13, 2017 at 16:37
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Looks like it´s just a chrome bug on Win7 and there is no solution other than restarting chrome.

According to https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=345698 the problem starts when using a drop down menu...

It probably is not caused by hardware acceleration or any addons.

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  • I've had the issue on Kubuntu Linux. Disabling hardware acceleration resolved the issue for me.
    – dotancohen
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 14:52
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Well, there must be some sort of flaw. According to other sources, this overlay can not be deactivated.

However on my end this was off.

I got it back after disabling two extensions (from the cv-pls club over in room 11) and then re-starting Chrome. This brought it back.

After that I re-enabled those two extensions and re-started again which didn't break it.

So I now have it back and the answer would be: Restart Chrome (probably with some extensions disabled).

I leave this here in form of an answer for further reference and will keep an eye on it if it happens again.

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    I have not changed any extensions I have installed, and I've restarted Chrome 33.0.1750.117 m, and the overlay is still off.
    – Dan Dascalescu
    Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 3:55
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    Me too. It's off for me in Chrome Version 33.0.1750.117 m, to my great annoyance. I'm going to try the Link Revealer extension, per ghacks.net/2014/03/01/…
    – Dave Burton
    Commented Mar 1, 2014 at 17:45
  • My statusbar disappeared afterwards again even with those extensions disabled. I guess this was only some random effect, totally unrelated to the named extensions. Sad :/
    – hakre
    Commented Jul 7, 2014 at 22:44
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Disabling hardware acceleration (incl Chrome restart) worked for me, per Harald's advice.

Running Win XP Home SP3, Chrome 33.0.1750.146 m

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    Did it last? Because for me it didn't came back always, fully, forever by restarting.
    – hakre
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 22:39
  • This is the solution which worked for me on Chrome 64 / Windows 10 (Feb 2018)
    – WoJ
    Commented Feb 10, 2018 at 12:33
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The problem is also in chrome version <33.0.1750.146 m> running on XP3 - so not just a win7 problem.

I've installed "Link Revealer" which works fine.

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  • I've had the issue on Kubuntu Linux. Disabling hardware acceleration resolved the issue.
    – dotancohen
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 14:52

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