Hardware acceleration lets Chrome use your computer’s graphics chip to draw pages and play video. When the graphics chip or its driver misbehaves, you can get black or white pages, flickering, garbled video or crashes. This page helps you confirm that acceleration is the cause and fix it, ideally without leaving it off for good.
The quick test: go to chrome://settings/system, turn off Use graphics acceleration when available, and select Relaunch. If the problem disappears, the graphics path is the cause. If it stays, look elsewhere, for example at your extensions. Just want the switch? See how to turn hardware acceleration on or off.
Check what Chrome is doing with your graphics chip
Open chrome://gpu and look at Graphics Feature Status at the top. Each line, such as Canvas, Compositing, Video Decode and WebGL, says one of these:
- Hardware accelerated: the graphics chip is doing that job.
- Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled: the processor is doing it instead. You see this on most lines when the setting is off.
- Disabled: the feature is not running at all. With acceleration off, WebGL and WebGPU show Disabled, so 3D maps and browser games may not work.
We checked these labels in Chrome with the setting on and off. The same page has a Download Report to File button, which is useful if a support forum asks for your graphics details.
Fix the cause: update the graphics driver
A new or broken graphics driver is the usual reason acceleration fails.
- Windows: update the driver, or roll it back if the trouble started after an update, in Device Manager under Display adapters. Microsoft’s driver update steps cover both.
- Mac: install macOS updates from Apple menu > System Settings > General > Software Update.
- Linux: install your distribution’s updates for the graphics driver.
Also make sure Chrome itself is current: how to update Chrome. Then turn acceleration back on and see whether the problem returns.
Only video is broken
If pages look fine but videos flicker, freeze or show wrong colours, you can turn off accelerated video alone and keep the rest:
- Go to
chrome://flags/#disable-accelerated-video-decode. - Set Hardware-accelerated video decode to Disabled.
- Restart Chrome.
Chrome then decodes video with the processor instead of the graphics chip. Google’s flags guide warns that flags can change or disappear without notice, so set it back to Enabled once a driver update fixes the problem. For other video faults, see fixing video playback in Chrome.
Laptops with two graphics chips (Windows)
If your laptop has both built-in and separate graphics, Chrome may work on one and fail on the other. You can choose which one Chrome uses in Windows’ graphics settings. The steps are in our Windows black screen guide.
Chrome says “Software only” but you want acceleration
Chrome has a built-in software rendering list of graphics setups it will not accelerate. The Software rendering list URL line further down chrome://gpu points to it. If that page shows Software only even with the setting on, your setup is probably on that list. The flag chrome://flags/#ignore-gpu-blocklist (Override software rendering list) “overrides the built-in software rendering list and enables GPU-acceleration on unsupported system configurations”, in Chrome’s own words. Use it only to test, and set it back to Disabled if anything goes wrong.
Undo flags you changed
If you have tried graphics flags before, open chrome://flags, select Reset all at the top and restart Chrome. Our guide to Chrome flags explains more.
Should you leave acceleration on?
Yes, if it works. It is on by default, and with it off, Chrome does all drawing and video with the processor and turns off WebGL. Leave it off only on a computer where it keeps causing black screens, white screens or crashes. For a black screen in particular, start with our black screen guide.