How to disable hardware acceleration in Chrome, now called graphics

The steps, on Windows, Mac and Linux

Google’s steps sit in its article on fixing Chrome when it crashes or will not open, under the heading Fix hardware acceleration issues, with the reason in one line: “There could be a problem with how your computer’s hardware works with Chrome”.

1. Open Chrome’s menu, the three dots at the top right that Google calls More, and select Settings.
2. In the list on the left, select System.
3. Turn off Use graphics acceleration when available. Google’s article still writes it as Use hardware acceleration when available; on the screen it is the graphics one.
4. Select Relaunch, which appears beside the switch once you change it, or close Chrome and open it again.

The restart is part of the change. In Chrome’s own code the Relaunch button shows only while the switch differs from the value Chrome had when it started, and the policy that controls the same setting is marked as one Chrome does not pick up while it is running. Until Chrome restarts, the browser is still drawing the way it was.

For the tabs that were open, Google’s crash article gives Ctrl + Shift + T on Windows and Command + Shift + T on a Mac to reopen them. Our page on reopening closed tabs has the rest.

Why you cannot find “hardware acceleration” in Settings

Because the word on the screen is graphics. Chromium, the code Chrome is built from, labels the switch Use graphics acceleration when available, and the developer note beside it describes it as the checkbox that makes Chrome render through graphics acceleration, the GPU, when it is available. Loyola University New Orleans’ IT help page, among the search results, still says Use hardware acceleration when available.

The gap has cost people time. In a Chrome Help Community thread from May 2024, a user who could not find the hardware switch listed what the System page did show, Use graphics acceleration when available among them. The Diamond Product Expert who answered sent them to a Windows setting instead, Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling, which is a different switch with a different job. The thread has been locked with 1,862 people marked as having the same question.

The same user wrote that searching the menu for hardware acceleration found nothing. Graphics is the word to search for.

How to check that it is off

Type chrome://gpu into the address bar after the restart. The page lists Chrome’s graphics features under the heading Graphics Feature Status, each with a coloured label. The labels come from a fixed list in Chromium’s code:

• Hardware accelerated, in green, means the feature is using the graphics chip.
• Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled, in yellow, is the wording for a feature that has been switched off.
• Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable, also yellow, is the wording for a feature Chrome could not use the chip for.

Disabled and unavailable are different words in that list, and only the first describes something switched off. We have not compared the page before and after on a real computer: the labels above are the ones the code can show.

When turning it off is the right fix

Google ties the switch to one diagnosis. In its crash article it is one of three things to try when a page fails in Chrome but works in another browser, next to reinstalling Chrome and reinstalling extensions. Google’s separate article on videos and games that will not play has five steps, from JavaScript to resetting the internet connection, and hardware acceleration is not among them.

For administrators, Google’s advice on running Chrome on virtual desktops is direct: if the virtual desktop server has no graphics processing units, set the hardware acceleration policy to false. Loyola’s IT page suggests it when Chrome is running slow.

With the switch on, Chrome uses the graphics chip where it is available; off, its graphics features show as Software only in chrome://gpu’s words. So the test is simple: turn it off, relaunch, and see whether the flicker, black area or freeze goes. If nothing changes, turn it back on the same way and look elsewhere, starting with our page on browser extensions.

The Windows setting with a similar name

Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling belongs to Windows, not to Chrome. Microsoft’s DirectX team introduced it with the Windows 10 May 2020 update as “a user opt-in, but off by default option”: with the right graphics hardware and driver, Windows hands most of the scheduling of work on the graphics chip to the chip itself. In 2020 Microsoft placed it under Settings, System, Display, Graphics settings, and said it appears only when both the graphics chip and its driver support it.

It is a setting of Windows as a whole, and Chrome’s own switch is a separate one in Chrome’s settings. If the problem is in Chrome, Chrome’s switch is the one Google documents. A graphics driver that is out of date is a separate question, covered on our page about updating graphics drivers.

On a Chromebook there is no switch

In Chromium’s code, the System section of Chrome’s settings and the graphics switch inside it are left out of ChromeOS, which is why people searching a Chromebook’s settings for it come up empty. In a Chromebook Community thread from March 2026, a Platinum Product Expert answered: “Not all Chromebooks have this option”, and pointed to an experimental flag instead.

What the answers offer are flags, not settings, and they do not agree:

• Panopto’s support article, written for Chromebooks, opens chrome://flags, searches for Hardware-accelerated video decode, sets it to Disabled and selects Relaunch.
• The Product Expert in the Community thread named a different flag, Override software rendering list, and said to make sure it is Disabled, then reboot.

Both are vendor and volunteer advice, not Google documentation, and Panopto calls chrome://flags the Experiments page. Our page on a Chromebook screen that glitches covers that problem.

On a PC your organization manages

The same setting exists as a Chrome policy, HardwareAccelerationModeEnabled, captioned Use graphics acceleration when available. Chromium’s definition gives it two values, true to enable graphics acceleration and false to disable it, supported on Chrome on computers since version 46, and marked as one Chrome does not pick up while it is running.

Natural Networks, an IT support company, publishes the registry form for Windows: a key at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE, Policies, Google, Chrome, and inside it a DWORD named HardwareAccelerationModeEnabled, 0 to disable and 1 to enable. On a work computer that is the administrator’s job, not the user’s.