By default, Google Chrome uses a feature called Hardware Acceleration. This offloads the heavy lifting of rendering graphics, playing 4K YouTube videos, and displaying complex web animations from your computer’s main processor (CPU) directly to your graphics card (GPU). Usually, this results in a much smoother, faster browsing experience.
However, if you are using an older computer, have outdated graphics drivers, or are running a dual-monitor setup with mismatched refresh rates, Hardware Acceleration can cause severe visual glitches. You might experience your screen flickering black for a second when opening a new tab, severe “screen tearing” while watching videos, or the browser completely locking up. If Chrome is acting visually unstable, disabling Hardware Acceleration is the first troubleshooting step you should take.
How to Turn Off Hardware Acceleration in Chrome
You can disable GPU offloading directly from the browser’s System settings.
- Open the Google Chrome browser.
- Click the three vertical dots (⋮) in the top-right corner of the window.
- Select Settings from the drop-down menu.
- In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on System (you may need to click on Advanced first if your window is small).
- Look for the toggle switch labelled Use hardware acceleration when available.
- Click the toggle switch to turn it Off (the switch will turn grey).
- A blue Relaunch button will appear next to the switch. Click it to restart Chrome and apply the changes.
Once Chrome reboots, all rendering tasks will be handled exclusively by your CPU. While this might slightly increase your computer’s power consumption, it completely bypasses your graphics card, almost always eliminating any visual artifacting, flickering, or screen tearing caused by driver conflicts.