How to Turn Hardware Acceleration On and Off in Chrome

What is Hardware Acceleration?

Hardware acceleration refers to whilst a application makes use of a pc’s hardware in guide to carry out a few features extra correctly than successful within side the software program. The hardware became designed to carry out a few features quicker than software program strolling at the CPU alone.

In Chrome, hardware acceleration makes use of your pc’s images processing unit (GPU) to address images-extensive obligations, like gambling movies, video games, or something that calls for quicker mathematical calculations. Passing off unique obligations offers your CPU a danger to paintings tirelessly on the whole lot else, whilst the GPU handles techniques that it became designed to run.

While this does sound wonderful in maximum cases, every now and then hardware acceleration can motive Chrome to lag, freeze, or crash—it can even motive your laptop’s battery to empty plenty quicker. As everyone’s pc is barely different, the problem should lie within side the GPU or motive force related to it. If you watched hardware acceleration is the culprit, the first-class factor to do is to disable it and notice if that fixes the problem.

Chrome Hardware Acceleration

How to Turn Hardware Acceleration On or Off

By default, hardware acceleration is enabled on Chrome, so let’s study disabling it first.

Fire up Chrome, click on the menu icon, after which click on on “Settings.” Alternatively, you can type chrome://settings/ into the Omnibox to head without delay there.

In the Settings tab, scroll right all the way down to the lowest after which click on “Advanced.”

Scroll right all the way down to the System segment and locate the “Use hardware acceleration whilst available” putting. Toggle the transfer to the “Off” role after which click on “Relaunch” to use the changes.

Warning: Make positive you keep something you’re running on. Chrome reopens the tabs that had been opened earlier than the relaunch however doesn’t keep any of the records contained in them.

If you’d alternatively wait to restart Chrome and end up something you’re running on, simply near the tab. Chrome will observe the extrade the following time you shut up and reopen it.

To verify it’s been absolutely disabled, type chrome://gpu/ into the Omnibox and hit Enter. When hardware acceleration has been disabled, a majority of the objects under “Graphics Feature Status” will read “Software only, hardware acceleration disabled.”

If you’re seeking to enable—or re-enable—hardware acceleration, head lower back to chrome://settings and toggle “Use hardware acceleration whilst available” putting to the “On” role. Then, click on “Relaunch” to use the extrade.

How to Know if Hardware Acceleration Helps

See whether or not hardware acceleration works higher on or off. The web website online is furnished with the aid of using Mozilla who’re the human beings in the back of the Firefox net browser, however the checks paintings similarly properly in Chrome. The web page affords some of hyperlinks with a purpose to display how properly your browser performs.

For example, a completely easy demo is furnished with the aid of using this lively blob, however there are in addition examples along with these draggable movies and this 3-d Rubik’s Cube.

If you’ve got got a first rate images card, attempt locating websites with high-quit Flash animations and video games to see whether or not there’s any stuttering.

Also, attempt looking high-definition movies on YouTube and ensure the video is crystal clear. Hardware acceleration can not assist with buffering. However, you would possibly locate that different capabilities of Chrome carry out some distance higher than earlier than.