The Custom Title Bar Intrusion
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) allow you to “install” websites like Twitter or Spotify via Google Chrome, making them look and behave like native desktop applications. To further blur the line between web and native apps, Chrome introduced an experimental feature governed by the “Desktop PWA window controls overlay” flag. When enabled, this feature allows web developers to extend their application’s interface directly into the title bar area of the application window, alongside the standard minimize, maximize, and close buttons.
While this allows for highly customized, immersive designs (similar to how Discord or Spotify native apps look), it can cause significant usability issues. If a web developer poorly implements this overlay, they might place buttons or search bars too close to the window controls, resulting in accidental clicks. Furthermore, it completely breaks the consistent, native visual styling of your operating system’s title bars. If you prefer your installed web apps to have a standard, predictable, and clean OS-level title bar, you should disable this overlay feature.
How to Turn Off PWA Window Controls Overlays
You can force Chrome to use standard title bars for PWAs via the experimental flags menu.
- Open Google Chrome.
- Click inside the main address bar at the top of the browser.
- Type
chrome://flagsand press Enter. - A page titled “Experiments” will load.
- In the search bar at the top, type Desktop PWA window controls overlay.
- The specific flag will appear highlighted in yellow. Next to it is a dropdown menu.
- Change the dropdown menu setting from “Enabled” or “Default” to Disabled.
- Click the blue Relaunch button at the bottom of the screen.
Upon restarting, Chrome will ignore requests from PWAs to draw custom content in the title bar area. Your installed web applications will revert to using the standard, clean title bar provided by Windows or macOS.