If you’re a Google Chrome user and feel like your browser has slowed down lately, you’re not alone. One of the ways that you can improve your Chome browsing experience is by using hardware acceleration. Here’s how you can enable hardware acceleration in Chrome.
Before we start with the tutorial, we must know what hardware acceleration means and how it works exactly. Let’s have a look.
What hardware acceleration does in Chrome
Hardware acceleration is the process by which your system moves some processing tasks from your CPU to your GPU. This reduces the load on your CPU, making your system work faster. Let’s understand from an example what happens when you enable this setting in your Google Chrome browser.
Assume that you are browsing normally in Chrome and have multiple tabs open. Suddenly, you start a resource-intensive task like playing 4K videos on YouTube or editing high-resolution images in Canva. In this situation, your CPU usage will naturally increase, which can make your browser slow and laggy.
With hardware acceleration enabled, Google Chrome offloads some tasks from your CPU and transfers them to your GPU. This way your CPU usage stays under control, resulting in better overall performance. This also ensures that you are using all the components of the system more efficiently.
Now that we know what hardware acceleration means and how it works, it’s time to enable it in your Chrome browser.
How to Enable or Disable Hardware Acceleration in Chrome
If you’re using Google Chrome on macOS, you have to follow two steps to make sure you’re using hardware acceleration. If you use Google Chrome on Windows, you can go one step further to enable high performance mode for Chrome in the Windows Graphics settings. Here’s how you can do all of that.
1. Enable Hardware Acceleration in Chrome Settings
Step 1: Open Google Chrome browser on your computer. Click on the three-dot icon.
Step 2: Now click on Settings. This will open Chrome settings in a new tab.
Step 3: In the search bar, type hardware.
Step 4: You will see an option called “Use hardware acceleration when available”. Enable the toggle for it.
Step 5: Relaunch Chrome browser on your computer.
Sometimes it may happen that your system still won’t allocate tasks to the GPU even after enabling hardware acceleration in the settings. To avoid such problems, you can force Google Chrome to use hardware acceleration by using Chrome Flags.
2. Force hardware acceleration in Chrome
Step 1: Open Google Chrome on your computer.
Step 2: In the search bar, type chrome://flags and press Enter. This will open Chrome Flags settings.
Step 3: In the search flag bar, type ‘override software rendering list’.
Step 4: Click the button. Select Enabled.
Step 5: Google Chrome will prompt you to relaunch the browser, so follow this step.
Once done, you have made sure that hardware acceleration is enabled in your Google Chrome browser. You can also check out our list of top flags to make Google Chrome faster.
3. Enable High Performance Graphics in Windows Settings
For Windows users, here’s how you can select high performance mode for your Google Chrome browser in Windows settings.
Step 1: Press Windows + S to open the search bar on your Windows machine. Type ‘Graphic Settings’ and open it from the results.
Step 2: Under Graphics Performance Options, select Desktop Application from the drop-down menu.
Step 3: Click Browse.
Step 4: You will have to locate the chrome.exe file on your system. The default path for this file is
C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Applications\chrome.exe
However, if you have selected a custom location to install Google Chrome on your computer, then you will have to locate this file accordingly.
Step 5: Select the chrome.exe file and click Add.
Step 6: Now, click on Options. This will open the Graphics preferences pop-up.
Step 7: Select ‘High Performance’ and click Save.
Step 8: Restart your Windows computer.
The steps above will ensure that whenever Google Chrome tries to use GPU resources on your computer, Windows will allow Chrome to access the best performance settings from your GPU.
Tip: Check out our guide to turning off hardware acceleration in Chrome and other popular browsers.
How to check if Hardware Acceleration is enabled in Chrome
If you want to check if hardware acceleration is enabled in your Chrome browser, follow these steps. This applies on both Windows and macOS.
Step 1: Open Google Chrome on your computer.
Step 2: In the search bar, type chrome://gpu.
Step 3: A new tab will open. Here check the ‘Graphic Feature Status’ section. If most of the options say ‘Hardware Acceleration’, this means that hardware acceleration is enabled in your Chrome browser.
For reference, this is what the Graphics Feature Status section looks like with hardware acceleration disabled.
Also Read: How to Spoof Location in Chrome, Edge and Firefox
How to see if hardware acceleration helps
Hardware acceleration may not work well on every computer. If you want to check if it works for you, use the Open Web Technology Demo. These tools are developed by the Mozilla Firefox team, but you can also use them in Google Chrome.
Here you can use tools like Zen Photon Garden that act as stress tests for your system. You can experience whether your browser works better with hardware acceleration. If you notice a drop in performance after enabling hardware acceleration, you must disable this setting immediately.
Hardware Acceleration FAQ in Chrome
1. how to fix Chrome screen flickering after enabling hardware acceleration?
If your Chrome screen starts flickering after using hardware acceleration, it could be because your GPU is not powerful enough or not optimized for hardware acceleration. In such cases, you should disable hardware acceleration or try workarounds like updating GPU drivers. You can refer to our article to find more ways to fix screen flickering in Chrome.
2. Why does Chrome still use CPU for video playback even after hardware acceleration is enabled?
This can happen when the video uses a codec that is not supported by your GPU. In such cases, even hardware acceleration can’t help you to play video with your GPU.
3. Why does Chrome keep crashing after enabling hardware acceleration?
The performance difference after enabling hardware acceleration depends on your computer’s GPU. In some cases, such as the newer M-silicon chip in the Apple Macbook, hardware acceleration can degrade your Chrome performance due to the architecture of the GPU. This is because these graphics cards are not optimized for hardware acceleration purposes. Therefore, if your Chrome browser keeps crashing, you should disable hardware acceleration.
Prefer stability over performance
Hardware acceleration can greatly improve your browsing experience in Google Chrome. However, one must understand that speed is not everything. A browser needs to be stable and reliable for maximum productivity. So if hardware acceleration is causing your system to malfunction, you’re better off not using it.
Categories: How to
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