How to Disable Hardware Acceleration in Google Chrome

To disable hardware acceleration in Google Chrome on a desktop computer, open Chrome, go to Settings > System, turn off “Use graphics acceleration when available,” and select Relaunch. Older Chrome help pages may call the same option “Use hardware acceleration when available.” Turning it off can be useful when you are troubleshooting flickering, blank or black video, rendering glitches, or crashes that appear to involve the GPU or graphics driver.

How to disable hardware acceleration in Chrome

This guide applies to desktop Chrome on Windows, macOS, and Linux. The fastest route is to enter chrome://settings/system in the address bar, but you can also reach the setting through Chrome’s menus.

1. Open Chrome Settings

Open Google Chrome, select the three-dot More menu in the upper-right corner, and choose Settings.

2. Open the System section

In Settings, select System in the left sidebar. If the sidebar is collapsed, you can use the Settings search box or enter chrome://settings/system directly.

3. Turn off graphics acceleration

Find Use graphics acceleration when available. When the switch is on, Chrome can use the GPU for supported browser workloads instead of relying only on software processing. In some older Chrome versions and Google support text, this setting is described as hardware acceleration, so do not worry if the wording on your computer is slightly different.

Turn the switch off. Google’s Chrome Help documentation includes disabling hardware acceleration as a troubleshooting step for Chrome crashes and rendering-related problems. See the official Chrome crash troubleshooting guide.

4. Relaunch Chrome

Select Relaunch when Chrome prompts you. Chrome must restart before the change is fully applied. Save any work in web apps first; normal tabs are generally restored after a relaunch, but you should not rely on unsaved form data or active web-app sessions surviving.

What happens after you turn hardware acceleration off?

Hardware acceleration lets Chrome use graphics hardware for tasks such as compositing, rasterization, video processing, WebGL, and other GPU-backed browser features when the platform supports them. Disabling the setting makes Chrome fall back to software processing for many of those tasks.

That can work around a buggy graphics driver or a Chrome-GPU compatibility problem, but there is a tradeoff: video playback, animation, 3D content, browser games, or graphics-heavy web apps may use more CPU or perform less smoothly. Google’s Chrome for Developers documentation also notes that WebGPU is disabled when “Use graphics acceleration when available” is turned off. You can read the official WebGPU troubleshooting guidance for more detail.

How to verify that acceleration is disabled

After Chrome relaunches, enter chrome://gpu in the address bar. Under Graphics Feature Status, features that previously used the GPU may now show messages such as Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable, or Disabled. The exact list varies by operating system, GPU, driver, and Chrome build.

The same Chrome developer documentation recommends chrome://gpu when checking whether Chrome detects and uses GPU acceleration, so this is a better verification method than judging only by how a page looks.

When should you disable hardware acceleration?

It is best treated as a troubleshooting switch, not a universal performance tweak. Try disabling it when Chrome has a problem that appears specifically related to rendering or GPU use, such as:

• black, blank, flickering, or corrupted areas on webpages;
• video playback that shows unusual visual artifacts or causes Chrome to freeze;
• repeated browser crashes that stop when GPU rendering is removed from the equation;
• a graphics-heavy site that works in another browser but fails only in Chrome.

If turning acceleration off does not help, turn it back on so Chrome can use supported GPU features normally.

If disabling acceleration does not fix Chrome

Update Chrome before making deeper changes. Open the three-dot menu, choose Help > About Google Chrome, let Chrome check for updates, and relaunch if an update is available. Google explains the current process in its official Chrome update guide.

You should also install graphics-driver updates from your operating system or GPU manufacturer, especially if chrome://gpu reports unavailable acceleration or driver-related problems. If the issue continues, test Chrome with unnecessary extensions disabled and consider resetting Chrome settings using Google’s official reset instructions.

On a work or school computer, an administrator may control hardware acceleration through Chrome Enterprise policy. If the switch is missing, locked, or immediately changes back, contact the device administrator rather than trying to override managed settings.

Should you leave hardware acceleration off?

Only if it clearly fixes the problem you are trying to solve. For normal browsing, video, WebGL, WebGPU, and other graphics-heavy web content, leaving graphics acceleration enabled usually allows Chrome to use the hardware capabilities available on the device. If the browser is stable with acceleration enabled, there is little reason to disable it permanently.