White Bar at top of screen in Windows while gaming in full-screen

If you see a White bar at the top of the screen in Explorer, Edge, Chrome, Teams, or any other app while gaming or watching videos in full-screen on Windows 11/10, this post will help you. The bar is not usable, and nothing happens even when you right-click it. The problem is related to graphics, the resolution of the screen, and the monitor.

White Bar at top of screen in Windows

If you see a white bar at the top of the computer screen when using Edge, Windows Explorer, Chrome, Teams, or any other app, here are suggestions to help you fix the issue. This happens because of the resolution or scaling issues. The GPU cannot scale apps, or an incorrect resolution leads to a white bar.

1. Change Screen Resolution using the NVIDIA Control Panel.
2. Scale Full Screen for Intel HD Graphics
3. Restart the Desktop Window Manager process
4. Tweak the Registry.

You may need admin permission to execute one of these solutions.

1] Change Screen Resolution using the NVIDIA Control Panel.

• Right-click on an empty area on the desktop, and select the  NVIDIA Control Panel option.
• Switch to Display Settings, and then select  change resolution
• Even if the resolutions are correct, change it to anything and confirm.
• Change again into the older resolution or the one that works best for the screen, and apply.

This and the next method removes any unwanted white bar that occurs because of the driver issue.

2] Scale Full Screen for Intel HD Graphics

• Right-click on the desktop and select Intel HD Graphics settings
• In the settings, locate Display, and then choose the option Scale Full Screen.
• Make sure the option Override Application Settings has the checkbox marked.

This will ensure that Intel HD graphics settings will dictate how to handle full-screen resolution instead of Windows. The display settings in Windows allow you to set upscaling, and it might have caused the problem.

3] Restart the Desktop Window Manager process

This can be a one-off issue, and restarting Desktop Window Manager can resolve this.

• Right-click on the taskbar, and select Task Manager
• Under the Processes tab, locate the Desktop Window Manager.
• Right-click on it, and select the end task.
• Sign-out, and then sign-in again, and hopefully, the white bar will not be there anymore.

4] Tweak the Registry

Open Registry Editor and navigate to:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar

Here make sure “Locked” is set to 1.

Restart your computer.

If nothing else works, and the problem is recent, you can try restoring the computer to a good state. It may undo whatever caused the problem. However, you will still have to figure out what caused the problem by carefully monitoring anything you update or Windows does through the update process.

Similar read: Maximized window leaves blank space on top of the screen.

How do I get Windows Explorer back to normal?

If your Windows Explorer or File Explorer is not working as expected, you can kill it using Task Manager. It will restart and fix glitches such as a black screen, white bar, click issue, etc. If this doesn’t work, you can run the SFC command to fix any corruption in the system files.

Read: White edges and borders around laptop screen

How do I clean up File Explorer?

If you want to remove the recently accessed file view when you click on Quick Access, it can be done through the folder option. In the options section, click on Recent searches and then select Clear search history.