Steam 'right click menu' is black - a longstanding issue...

[EarthDog]

I ran into an issue with (rather, because of..) my new monitor. I used to run 2x 1440p monitors (75Hz/165Hz). I upgraded the 165Hz monitor to a 4K/240Hz ditty. After doing so, the right click menu from the Steam icon in the taskbar pops up black*. Annoying as that is normally how I launch my Steam titles (it keeps 4/5 of your latest in that menu). Getting frustrated it wasn't a 'driver thing' I decided to hit the g00gl3s.

Apparently, this is a known and longstanding issue when the monitor's resolutions differ. *Specifically, it happens after my monitor powers down (OLED, so I set it to shut off after 2 minutes). When I come back, that menu stops working. Steam seems to be aware of this, but hasn't fixed it/worked with whoever needs to fix it.

Here's a great explanation of what's going on...

Spoiler: Explanation

Those black boxes are there because the GPU rendering context that the dropdowns use has been released by the driver. If the application tries to continue to use it, it doesn't crash - it just gets back a zero-d out chunk of bytes. I.e. black.

That rendering context can be prematurely released under multiple conditions.
One of them is a (partial) driver crash or hang and the Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR) emergency mechanism kicking in to perform a (partial) driver reset. (TDR was originally invented to prevent full hangs from leaving users with non-interactive desktop environments. But since then drivers got pretty smart about resetting only the 'stuck' parts.)

The system going into sleep or hibernate and powering down the video card, is another reason.

In both cases, the application receives messages from the Windows OS that tell it the GPU driver has been reset or has been reinitialized after resuming from sleep. But it has to handle those and accordingly recreate new rendering contexts.

Chromium itself nominally does do that correctly. But if you embedded Chromium via e.g. CEF then things get complicated because of how Chromium is no longer the top-level application capable of managing its own window and its own rendering contexts. The embedding application needs to handle part of the workload.

And Valve doesn't handle all of it correctly. Which isn't exactly a new issue: they never handled it correctly. Not since the first versions of the Steam client that started embedding Chromium. Look back through the forums for all the bug reports and complaints of black screen problems. 80-90% of those are due to these type of rendering context problems. These span literal decades. One of the longest ongoing problems with Steam and one that will likely never be fully fixed.

I also hear if you have scaling (I have the 4K monitor at 150%) it does it too.

Fear not, lol... there are workarounds... for most. For me....... too many considerations. Here's what I scrounged up!

1. setting the same resolution on the secondary display as on the main display using Dynamic/Virtual Super Resolution.
2. In power options disable turning off the monitor.

Start -> Control Panel -> Power Options
Change Plan Settings
Turn off the display: Never

You can then configure a screensaver to protect the monitor. I use blank
3. Move the window between the monitors and 99% of the time it fixes my issue.
4. Restart Steam


First world problems, I know... but man is it annoying!!

Sources:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/16s28n7/right_clicking_steam_icon_in_the_system_tray_just

Drop down menus are black after recent steam major update :: Help and Tips

steamcommunity.com

Drop down menus are black boxes :: Steam Client Beta

I seem to in the last month have developed an issue with the steam client where all my drop down menus, such as changing my online status to away or invisible, all that displays is a black box. funny thing is the black box work, E.G. changing status, so the menu is half working but all it shows...

steamcommunity.com

I was going to drop a video in here, but..... NO.

 

[rainless]

No screenshot?

 

[EarthDog]

For those with aphantasia this is what Steam's right click menu looks like all black.

 

[rainless]

Hmmm...

I had a very similar problem with my app on iOS. I was showing it off at an art opening and the guy decided to download it immediately.

He loads it up... Screen was black. (Or at least dark gray). You couldn't read what was going on.

The second I got home I jumped on my laptop... then I grabbed my phone and downloaded the app the same way he did...

...was working just fine for me.

Then I realeized there was no actual crash... The screen just looked wrong. So I theorized that he musst have a dark theme.

He did. And switchint ot a regular theme seems to have solvedthe problem.

I wager the steam thing is kinda similar.