Resize and Style Google Chrome Scroll bar without Extension
There are various extensions available in the Web Store to decorate their Chrome installation. [See 5 ultra-useful new tab extensions]. One extension that I found really good to stylize my chrome’s default scroll bar and that give me that little bit of extra screen space or just for the joy of personalizing is Simple Scroll Bar X. This looked good but while installing it chrome warned me that it can access all my websites data. Moreover, if you’re like me and don’t like installing extensions for every small thing, you can easily achieve the same result by simply editing Chrome’s Custom.css
file.
You can find it at the following location:
Windows:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\User StyleSheets\Custom.css
Mac:
/Users/YourUsername/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/User StyleSheets/Custom.css
Ubuntu:
~/.config/chromium/Default/User\ StyleSheets/Custom.css
Once located, open it in a text editor and add the following code:
::-webkit-scrollbar-track-piece{ background-color:#fff; -webkit-border-radius:0; } ::-webkit-scrollbar{ width:8px; height:8px; } ::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb{ height:50px; background-color:#999; -webkit-border-radius:4px; outline:2px solid #fff; outline-offset:-2px; border: 2px solid #fff; } ::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb:hover{ height:50px; background-color:#9f9f9f; -webkit-border-radius:4px; }
Save the file and reload your tabs to see the change.
As you can see it’s basic CSS so, if you wish, you can easily modify the code to your liking. For example, if you find the scroll bar too thin change its width by editing this part:
::-webkit-scrollbar{ width:16px; }
You should be able to see this styled scroll bar on all pages, including scroll bars within a page.
Manually customizing your browser by editing style sheet, instead of installing extensions, eradicates the risk of someone tracking your browsing history and it is also less intensive on system resources.
If you’d like to further customize Chrome, check out this post on styling the Web Inspector.
Im running Ubuntu 11.10 and I cant find “~/.config/chromium/Default/User\ StyleSheets/Custom.css”.
Any suggestions ?
@Greg, If not make your own custom.css at that location.
Hi, I know this is a very old post but does it still work? I tried it and it doesn’t seem to change. Thanks
Chrome has dropped support for custom CSS and user stylesheets. So, unfortunately, it is not possible now.
doesn’t work for me, i change the width multiple times and no effect.
did chrome disable the variable?
this is so stupid
Now it does not work for me either. Version 63.0.3239.84 on Ubuntu ridiculous!! how difficult is it to add the width of scrollbar to the product.