How to disable hardware acceleration in Google Chrome

  • To disable Chrome’s hardware acceleration,

    Google Chrome

    >

    Settings

    >

    System

    and turn off the

    “Use hardware acceleration when available”

    toggle switch.
  • You can turn on the toggle switch to re-enable the feature at any time.

On

Google Chrome

, hardware acceleration is a feature that allows the browser to access the device’s graphics card to speed up certain processes, thus improving the overall user experience when surfing the internet on

Windows 11

, 10, macOS, or Linux.

However, depending on your device configuration, hardware acceleration can negatively affect your experience by preventing visual elements from displaying correctly on the screen.

Disabling hardware acceleration can fix this issue if menus and dialog boxes are not rendering as expected.

In this

guide

, I will teach you the steps to turn off hardware acceleration in Chrome. (If you use Microsoft Edge, you can

disable access to the graphics card

with these instructions.)

  • Disable hardware acceleration on Chrome

  • Enable hardware acceleration on Chrome

Disable hardware acceleration on Chrome

To turn off hardware acceleration in Google Chrome, use these steps:

Open

Chrome

.

Click the horizontal ellipsis menu button in the top-right corner and click on

Settings

.

Click on

System

.

Turn off the

“Use hardware acceleration when available”

toggle switch under the “System” section.

Chrome disable hardware acceleration

Click the

Relaunch

button.

Once you complete the steps, menus and visual elements should render correctly on Chrome.

Enable hardware acceleration on Chrome

To enable hardware acceleration on Google Chrome, use these steps:

Open

Google Chrome

.

Click the

Settings and More

(three-dotted) button on the top-right corner.

Click on

Settings

.

Click on

System

.

Turn on the

“Use graphics acceleration when available”

toggle switch under the “System” section to enable hardware acceleration.

Chrome enable hardware acceleration

Click the

Relaunch

button.

After you complete the steps, the browser will offload some processes to the graphics card instead of using the processor exclusively.


Update July 15, 2024:

This guide has been updated to ensure accuracy and reflect changes to the process.

Leave a Comment