How to Disable the Google Chrome ‘Calculate window occlusion on Windows’ Flag

The Aggressive Resource Management

In an effort to reduce CPU and memory usage, Google Chrome utilizes a feature called “Window Occlusion.” This feature constantly calculates whether a Chrome window is completely covered (occluded) by another application window on your desktop. If Chrome determines that you cannot physically see its window because something else is on top of it, it aggressively suspends the rendering of that tab and drastically reduces its background processing priority.

While this is excellent for laptop battery life, it can cause problems for power users. If you are running a web app that needs to process data continuously, or if you use multiple monitors and frequently drag windows over one another, Chrome’s occlusion calculations can incorrectly pause an app you need running. If you experience stuttering or paused tasks when Chrome is minimized or covered on Windows, you can disable the occlusion calculations via Chrome Flags.

How to Disable Window Occlusion Calculations

You must access Chrome’s experimental flags menu to change this behavior.

1. Open Google Chrome on your Windows PC.
2. Click inside the main address bar at the top of the browser.
3. Type chrome://flags and press Enter.
4. A page titled “Experiments” will load with a search bar at the top.
5. In the search bar, type Calculate window occlusion on Windows.
6. The specific flag will appear highlighted in yellow. Next to it is a dropdown menu, likely set to “Default.”
7. Click the dropdown menu and select Disabled.
8. Chrome will prompt you to restart the browser for the change to take effect. Click the blue Relaunch button at the bottom of the screen.

Chrome will now treat all of its windows as if they are visible all the time. It will continue to render and process background tabs at full speed, regardless of what other applications you open on top of them.