Unknown Grey Bar freezes Home Screen

[Messy Paula]

I have a ZTE Axon 7. Starting 4 days ago, I have sporadically had a grey bar pop up just below the notifications bar on the home screen. The word "partners" is in white on the left hand side. When this happens, the screen freezes and nothing works except for the notifications which I can pull down. Clearing the notifications does not remove the "partners" bar. I can get rid of the "partners" bar temporarily by restarting the phone. Does anyone else have this problem? . I am hesitant to factory reset my phone is fully functional when I don't have the "partners" bar.

 

[Hadron]

Try clearing your browser's cache. This could be some dodgy ad script malfunctioning.

Of course it could also be an adware problem of some other sort, but if so it will require identifying and removing the app, so it's worth trying the above quickly just in case.

Of course it could be some other malfunctioning app as well. It doesn't sound like a system feature. Any apps updated or installed shortly before it started would be suspects.