iATKOS | United Kingdom

Alright, not an expert on OCLP , but since the Red Screen of Death has been very annoying as a new Mac Pro user, I've been really keeping up with the OCLP threads regarding updates/issues. I have a Mac Pro 6,1 that is running on the Sequoia Betas (current is 15.7.4) I've spent an insane amount of time getting Google Chrome to work with my computer, so I thought I'd share a bit of insight on a workaround since I have spent days on this.

First off, this is very much a 'Give a Mouse a Cookie' scenario. The easiest option and most logical step is to disable "Use graphics acceleration when available" setting within Chrome's preferences (Three dots->Settings->System). However, there seem to be many issues with Chrome being laggy when this is disabled, SPECIFICALLY using any HiDPI (or upscaling) monitors.

((Separate issue, but this is very prevalent if you are using the app 'BetterDisplay' to manage your display resolution... highly recommended to get rid of the blurriness on older computers/monitors.))

So... we can't run on the accelerated graphics, because of the 'Red Screen of Death' issue. And we can't run it with that option toggled off on HiDPI The easiest thing to do is do those 'shells' as suggested, however, I find it annoying to constantly do that with Chrome. What to do?

After much digging, there are tons of threads suggesting to run the terminal command forcing Google chrome to use graphics backend ANGLE OpenGL

open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app --args --use-angle=gl 

Now, of course you could run this as a terminal command EVERY TIME, make a shell, or an Automator script etc., but that can be cumbersome if you are constantly having to click an alias to open, and as mentioned before, there are times when you accidentally open it up, and I've had to hard restart just because I'd be 'Red Screen'd out of work. So, I would think it would be intuitive if Google Chrome could change it's executing script to always have that line of code behind it at launch... because it's frickin' Google, you can't just modify the 'package contents', so you would have to go inside the Chrome Experiments page (chrome://flags/) I kept searching and huh.... no option for ANGLE/OpenGL, even though TONS of forums said it should be there.

More and more digging later, I found out that Google Chrome had STOPPED including that as a 'flags' option right around Google Chrome v141. So... if we could get a downgrade to Google Chrome v140, maybe it would allow the ANGLE backend? Surprise, surprise... Google Chrome doesn't have a download list of 'old versions' (only Chromium). MORE DIGGING... I finally found on Github a LIST of versions at https://github.com/ulixee/chrome-versions/blob/main/versions.json . Scroll down to find any version 140 (I downloaded 140.0.7339.214, the last one). Chrome kept crashing upon launch since it probably conflicts with some hidden files expecting to see a newer version.... So I used an app uninstaller (AppCleaner CleanMyMac etc.) to make sure all repositories are cleansed. Then, Chrome can go back into the Applications folder. (REMEMBER do NOT launch right away, use that terminal command above until you get to the 'chrome://flags/' page. Then look up ' Choose ANGLE graphics backend ' and choose 'OpenGL')

Of course it doesn't end there... Chrome is notorious for pushing updates CONSTANTLY, so after a ton more digging, I ran these commands to STOP google from updating AND to get the stupid popup to disappear.

defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.google.Keystone.Agent.plist DisableAutoUpdateChecks -bool true

and

defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0

...then I went into ~/Library and deleted the content in the 'Google' folder (which includes 'GoogleSoftwareUpdate'. Then, to make sure the updater has no access to the folder, I ran this terminal command to make sure NOTHING has access (aka even Google can't write to the folder, forcing Chrome to error when trying to auto-update)

sudo chmod -R 000 ~/Library/Google 

Finally... to get rid of that annoying 'Google Chrome Is Out of Date' popup that will inevitably happen, I stumbled across this gem of code, that seems to work perfectly...

defaults write com.google.Chrome SuppressUnsupportedOSWarning -bool true

I know that's an insane amount of steps just to get google chrome to work properly, but I think that just shows that 1. You can find a solution for almost anything 2. OCLP folks would REALLY be doing everyone a favor if the Red Screen of Death issue can be taken care of! Like I said, I'm definitely no expert, but I hope some of this might help those who need it (and future me, who will never be able to figure out these steps again! haha!)

Cheers :)