How to Turn Hardware Acceleration On or Offīy default, hardware acceleration is enabled on Chrome, so let’s look at disabling it first.įire up Chrome, click the menu icon, and then click on “Settings.” Alternatively, you can type chrome://settings/ into the Omnibox to go directly there. If you suspect hardware acceleration is the culprit, the best thing to do is to disable it and see if that fixes the problem. As everyone’s computer is slightly different, the issue could lie in the GPU or driver associated with it. While this does sound great in most cases, sometimes hardware acceleration can cause Chrome to lag, freeze, or crash-it could even cause your laptop’s battery to drain a lot faster.

Passing off specific tasks gives your CPU a chance to work tirelessly on everything else, while the GPU handles processes that it was designed to run. In Chrome, hardware acceleration utilizes your computer’s graphics processing unit (GPU) to tackle graphics-intensive tasks, like playing videos, games, or anything that requires faster mathematical calculations. The hardware was designed to perform some functions faster than software running on the CPU alone.

Hardware acceleration refers to when a program uses a computer’s hardware in support to perform some functions more efficiently than capable in the software.