Should Hardware Acceleration Be On or Off? — Chrome, Edge, Office and Teams Settings, and How It Differs from HAGS

The settings screens of Chrome, Edge and Office have an item called “hardware acceleration” or “graphics acceleration”. If you search for a broken video or a blank white screen, you will often find articles that say turning it off fixes it.

Leave it on as a rule. Turn it off only to find out whether a display fault is caused by GPU processing. If turning it off fixes things, update the GPU driver and then turn it back on. Microsoft’s documentation describes the same order¹. If you leave it off, the CPU takes over video playback and drawing, and the CPU load goes up².

This article explains where this setting lives in Chrome, Edge, Office and Teams, which symptoms turning it off can fix, what you lose when it is off, and how it differs from Windows’ “Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling” (HAGS). I checked the setting locations and names on November 3, 2026, against official documentation and the Chromium source. I also checked the Chrome and Edge screens in Chrome 156 and Edge 152 installed on a Windows 11 Enterprise evaluation (26H2) virtual machine. I checked the Chrome setting and the chrome://gpu output, and the settings screens of Office (Microsoft 365 Current Channel) and Teams (the free personal edition), on a physical Windows 11 Pro (25H2) PC with a GPU. I did not check Outlook, Teams with a work or school account, behavior over Remote Desktop, or the effect of turning it off on performance or battery. What you see may differ by version.

Hardware acceleration is a setting that hands work to the GPU

Hardware acceleration is a mechanism that hands work such as drawing and video playback to the GPU (graphics processing unit) instead of the CPU. Because it uses the GPU, the app loads and uses the graphics driver installed on the PC.

According to Microsoft’s documentation, Office 2013 and later use hardware acceleration when it is available. To do so, Office uses the PC’s graphics adapter and loads the graphics driver’s code³. Edge also decodes H.264 video by default along a path that uses Windows hardware acceleration⁴.

flowchart TB
        accTitle: Hardware acceleration on and off
        accDescr: A diagram showing that when it is on, the GPU handles drawing and video decoding through the graphics driver, and when it is off, the CPU handles them.
        A["App drawing and video playback"] --> B{"Hardware acceleration"}
        B -->|"On"| C["Graphics driver"]
        C --> D["GPU does the work"]
        B -->|"Off"| E["CPU does the work (software)"]

Figure 1: When it is on the GPU does the work, and when it is off the CPU takes over the same work.

Because the GPU is used, bugs in the graphics driver show up as bugs in the app. Microsoft explains that Office’s hardware acceleration relies on an up-to-date, compatible display driver⁵. The graphics driver also comes up in the explanations of the symptoms listed in the sections below.

In the diagram a solid line marks a relation that always holds and a dashed line marks a conditional one (the conditions are given per relation on the detail page). The full list of relations (9 in total, with evidence and certainty) and the definitions of the main concepts are collected on the knowledge map detail page (in Japanese). Data: JSON-LD / Turtle

Leave it on, and turn it off temporarily when something goes wrong

Microsoft’s documentation treats this setting differently depending on the situation.

• When videos won’t play: Check that graphics acceleration is on in Edge’s settings. If it is on and videos still won’t play, Microsoft advises updating the GPU driver and then turning the setting off once and back on⁴.
• When CPU usage is high: Because drawing video, WebGL and canvas content in software raises CPU usage, Microsoft advises checking that hardware acceleration is being used².
• When the window is blank white and won’t start: Turn it off once to rule out a graphics driver problem. If that fixes it, update the driver and turn the setting back on¹.

flowchart TB
        accTitle: Deciding whether to turn hardware acceleration off
        accDescr: A diagram showing that if there is no display fault you leave it on, you turn it off to test only when there is a fault, and if that fixes it you update the driver and turn it back on.
        A{"Is there a display fault?"} -->|"No"| B["Keep using it on"]
        A -->|"Yes"| C["Turn it off temporarily and restart"]
        C --> D{"Fixed?"}
        D -->|"Fixed"| E["Update the driver and turn it back on"]
        D -->|"Not fixed"| F["Turn it back on and look for another cause"]

Figure 2: You turn it off to isolate the cause; once it is fixed, update the driver and turn it back on.

Google’s help also lists turning this setting off as one of the fixes when pages don’t display correctly or Chrome crashes. The reason given is that there may be a problem with how your computer’s hardware and Chrome work together⁶. In other words, turning it off is a remedy for when a fault has appeared, not a setting that makes things faster.

Symptoms that turning it off can fix

The symptoms that official documentation ties to this setting are as follows.

• Edge stays blank white and won’t open, or stops responding right away: Microsoft explains that a graphics driver problem can leave the window blank¹.
• YouTube plays sound but the video is green: YouTube’s help explains how to turn off the hardware acceleration setting in Chrome⁷.
• Pages don’t display correctly, or Chrome crashes: Google’s help lists turning this setting off together with other fixes⁶.
• Office’s screen is blurry, flickers, goes white or black, shows text poorly, or crashes: Microsoft explains that a video configuration incompatible with how Office draws its display can be the cause, and advises updating the video driver⁵.

flowchart TB
        accTitle: Causes of symptoms that turning it off can fix
        accDescr: A diagram showing that symptoms such as a blank white screen, green video and a flickering Office window are described in official documentation as problems with processing that uses the GPU.
        A["A problem in processing that uses the GPU"] --> B["The screen goes blank white"]
        A --> C["The video turns green"]
        A --> D["Flickering or blurring"]
        A --> E["Crashes"]

Figure 3: Each symptom is a reason to check whether the cause lies in the combination of GPU processing and driver.

For Office, an example where the driver really was the cause has been published. Certain versions of Intel’s graphics driver had a bug that made Office stop responding. Microsoft advises first updating the driver to a fixed version, and, if that is not possible, disabling Office’s hardware acceleration manually³.

Put the other way, when turning it off fixes things, all you learn is that “the cause is somewhere in GPU processing”. It is no reason to conclude that the GPU itself is broken.

What you lose when it is off

When it is off, the CPU takes over the work the GPU was doing. Microsoft’s documentation points to the following effects.

• The CPU load goes up: Drawing video, WebGL and canvas in software raises CPU usage².
• Video decoding switches to software: When you disable hardware acceleration in Edge, H.264 video is played with a software decoder (FFmpeg). If that path also fails, H.264 video does not play correctly⁴.
• WebGPU stops working: Turning this setting off in Chrome disables WebGPU⁸.

flowchart TB
        accTitle: What happens when you turn it off
        accDescr: A diagram showing that turning hardware acceleration off moves work such as video and WebGL to the CPU, raises the CPU load, and makes WebGPU unavailable.
        A["Hardware acceleration off"] --> B["Video, WebGL and canvas processed on the CPU"]
        B --> C["CPU load goes up"]
        A --> D["Video decoding becomes software"]
        A --> E["WebGPU becomes unavailable"]

Figure 4: Turning it off does not make the work go away; it moves to the CPU.

For Office too, Microsoft recommends that once you have updated to the fixed driver, you clear the “Disable hardware graphics acceleration” check box so Office runs with the best performance³. The setting that turns it off is positioned as a workaround until the cause is dealt with.

Where the setting is and what it is called

The location and name of the setting for each app are as follows. Teams is a different story, so it is covered separately at the end.

flowchart TB
        accTitle: The hardware acceleration setting in each app
        accDescr: A diagram showing that Chrome and Edge have the item on the System page of their settings, Office used to have it under Options, Advanced but it was removed in some editions, and no officially documented setting can be found in the new Teams.
        A["Chrome"] --> A1["chrome://settings/system"]
        A1 ~~~ B["Edge"]
        B --> B1["edge://settings/system"]
        B1 ~~~ C["Office"]
        C --> C1["Options → Advanced (removed in some editions)"]
        C1 ~~~ D["New Teams"]
        D --> D1["No officially documented setting found"]

Figure 5: Chrome and Edge have the setting on similar settings pages, while Office and Teams depend on the edition.

Chrome

Type chrome://settings/system in the address bar, turn off “Use graphics acceleration when available”, and restart Chrome. From the menu, go to “Settings” → “System”⁶. On the physical PC (25H2, Chrome 156), toggling this item made a [Relaunch] button appear on that row. This happened both when I turned it off and when I turned it back on.

Google’s help refers to it as “Use hardware acceleration when available”⁶. In the Chromium source, however, the English text of this item is “Use graphics acceleration when available”, and the Japanese text uses the word “graphics” as well⁹. Even if the name you find by searching differs from the name on screen, it is the same item.

Edge

Type edge://settings/system in the address bar, open [System], toggle the graphics acceleration item, and restart Edge. Microsoft’s English documentation calls it “Use graphics acceleration when available”, and the Japanese documentation uses a translation of that wording¹¹⁰. The Japanese documentation is machine-translated, so its wording can differ slightly from the Japanese screen; in Edge 152 the two did not match exactly.

If you can’t change the item on a company PC, an administrator may have locked it with the HardwareAccelerationModeEnabled policy. Disabling this policy turns graphics acceleration off; enabling it or leaving it not configured uses it when available. Changes take effect when Edge is restarted¹¹.

Office

In earlier versions of Office, you went to “File” → “Options” → “Advanced” in any of the apps and checked “Disable hardware graphics acceleration”. That is the English name given in Microsoft’s documentation³.

However, Microsoft has announced that it removed this option from the Excel desktop app in Microsoft 365¹². You may not find the item in your version. On a physical PC (25H2) with Microsoft 365 Current Channel (16.0.20527.20112) installed, Word and Excel had no hardware graphics acceleration item under [Advanced]. PowerPoint had “Disable hardware graphics acceleration during slide show” under [Display] in [Advanced]. I did not check Outlook.

When Office detects certain combinations of video card and driver, it disables hardware acceleration automatically. Nothing is shown on screen when it does. If you update the driver and compatibility improves, it is re-enabled automatically⁵. Even if the item is missing, updating the driver is still worth trying first.

flowchart TB
        accTitle: How Office disables hardware acceleration automatically
        accDescr: A diagram showing that Office checks the combination of video card and driver at startup, silently disables hardware acceleration for an incompatible combination, and re-enables it automatically when updating the driver improves compatibility.
        A["Start Office"] --> B{"Incompatible combination?"}
        B -->|"No"| C["Use hardware acceleration"]
        B -->|"Yes"| D["Disabled automatically, without notice"]
        D --> E["Update the driver"]
        E --> F["Re-enabled automatically if compatibility improves"]

Figure 6: Whether or not the option exists, Office switches by itself based on the combination with the driver.

Teams

The earlier Teams (classic Teams) stopped being available on July 1, 2025¹³. For the new Teams now in use, as of November 3, 2026, I could not find any Microsoft documentation describing how to switch hardware acceleration.

In the new Teams (26288.2004.5269.3420, the free personal edition) on the physical PC (25H2), I looked through 13 pages of [Settings] and found no GPU or hardware acceleration item. Teams used with a work or school account may have different items.

Forums describe editing a settings file or launch options. These are not methods Microsoft recommends, so this article does not recommend them. If you have a display problem in Teams, start by updating the graphics driver, as with any other app.

Check the current state with chrome://gpu

Turning the setting on does not guarantee the GPU is actually being used. Microsoft advises updating the GPU driver when items show software-only rendering².

In Chrome, opening chrome://gpu shows a list of the status of each graphics feature. Google’s WebGPU documentation advises checking whether it shows “WebGPU: Hardware accelerated”. You can also use this page to check whether Chrome detects the GPU⁸.

On a physical PC (25H2) with a discrete GPU (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti), “Graphics Feature Status” showed “WebGPU: Hardware accelerated”. When I turned the setting off and restarted Chrome, it changed to “WebGPU: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable” and “Compositing: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled”, and turning the setting back on restored the original display.

In Edge you can see the same information at edge://gpu. Microsoft advises checking that Video Decode shows Hardware accelerated⁴. When items in “Graphics Feature Status” show software-only rendering, it recommends updating the driver and checking that the setting is on².

flowchart TB
        accTitle: Checking with chrome://gpu
        accDescr: A diagram showing that you open chrome://gpu or edge://gpu, look at whether each item is processed in hardware, and update the driver if it is software only.
        A["Open chrome://gpu or edge://gpu"] --> B{"Does it say Hardware accelerated?"}
        B -->|"Yes"| C["The GPU is being used"]
        B -->|"Software only"| D["Update the graphics driver"]
        D --> E["Also check that the setting is on"]

Figure 7: Check the setting’s on/off state and whether the GPU is actually used separately.

The contents of this page also help when you report a problem. Microsoft advises saving the edge://gpu report and attaching it when you contact support⁴.

Remote Desktop may not use the GPU in the first place

In apps on the machine you connect to over Remote Desktop, the GPU may not be used regardless of your local settings.

According to Microsoft’s policy documentation, on a Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host) server, the default adapter for sessions is the “Microsoft Basic Render Driver” unless the policy is configured. Otherwise, the hardware graphics renderer is used by default¹⁴. Office’s documentation also states that when Office runs in a Remote Desktop session, hardware acceleration that uses the video card is always disabled⁵.

flowchart TB
        accTitle: How the GPU is used over Remote Desktop
        accDescr: A diagram showing that on an RD Session Host server the Microsoft Basic Render Driver is the default unless the policy is configured, and that Office does not use hardware acceleration in a Remote Desktop session.
        A["Remote Desktop session"] --> B{"RD Session Host server?"}
        B -->|"Yes (policy not configured)"| C["Microsoft Basic Render Driver"]
        B -->|"Otherwise"| D["Hardware renderer"]
        A --> E["Office does not use hardware acceleration"]

Figure 8: On the remote machine, check whether the session can use the GPU, separately from the app’s setting.

When Remote Desktop is slow, before switching app settings, investigate separately where the time goes: input, rendering or the network. This is explained in detail in “Why Is RDP Sluggish on a Fast Connection?”.

A different setting from Windows’ GPU scheduling (HAGS)

Windows’ “Settings” → “System” → “Display” → “Graphics” has an item called “Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling” (HAGS). The names are similar, but it plays a different role from the browser and Office settings.

The browser and Office settings decide whether that app uses the GPU. HAGS switches how work handed to the GPU is managed, and turning it off does not stop normal GPU drawing. This is explained in detail in “What Is Windows’ Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling?”.

flowchart TB
        accTitle: How the app settings differ from HAGS
        accDescr: A diagram showing that the browser and Office settings decide whether that app uses the GPU, and HAGS decides how work handed to the GPU is managed across Windows.
        A["Browser and Office settings"] --> B["Whether that app uses the GPU"]
        C["Windows HAGS"] --> D["How work handed to the GPU is managed"]

Figure 9: The app settings change “whether to use it”; HAGS changes “how it is managed”.

When investigating a problem, don’t switch both at the same time. You would no longer be able to tell which change made the symptom change. The same goes for CPU-side settings such as efficiency mode in Task Manager: change only one thing at a time.

Steps for switching it and checking

When you use this setting to isolate a display fault, proceed in the following order. On a company-managed PC, if you can’t change the setting, don’t work around the restriction; talk to your administrator.

1. Save the file you are working on and note the current setting (on or off).
2. Turn off hardware acceleration only in the app that has the fault. Don’t change other settings such as Windows HAGS.
3. Restart the app. Both Chrome and Edge tell you to restart after changing the setting⁶⁴.
4. Repeat the operation that caused the fault and check whether the symptom has gone.
5. If it is fixed, update to the driver recommended by your PC or GPU manufacturer, turn the setting back on, and check again¹.
6. If it is not fixed, turn the setting back on. Assume the cause lies outside GPU processing, and look into extensions, the profile, app updates and so on.

flowchart TB
        accTitle: Steps for switching the setting and checking
        accDescr: A diagram showing the steps of recording the current setting, turning it off for one app only, restarting, checking the symptom, updating the driver and turning it back on if fixed, and turning it back on and looking for another cause if not.
        A["Record the current setting"] --> B["Turn it off for that app only"]
        B --> C["Restart the app"]
        C --> D{"Has the symptom gone?"}
        D -->|"Gone"| E["Update the driver, then turn it back on"]
        D -->|"Not gone"| F["Turn it back on and look for another cause"]

Figure 10: Whichever way it goes, finish by turning the setting back on.

If the symptom still appears after you update the driver and turn the setting back on, that app and driver combination may not work well together. Only in that case should you keep using it off. The CPU load goes up, as explained above.

Summary

Hardware acceleration in browsers and Office is a setting that hands drawing and video playback to the GPU. Use it on as a rule, and turn it off temporarily to isolate the cause only when a fault appears, such as a blank white window or broken video. Once it is fixed, update the driver and turn it back on.

Chrome and Edge are switched at chrome://settings/system and edge://settings/system, and you check the actual state at chrome://gpu and edge://gpu. Some Office versions, such as Excel in Microsoft 365, have had the item removed, and the new Teams has no officially documented setting. For both, start by updating the driver. Windows HAGS is a separate setting, so don’t switch it at the same time.

Other GPU-related settings are explained in the following articles.

• What Is Windows’ Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling? — Does Turning It On Make Your PC Faster?
• What Are “Dedicated GPU Memory” and “Shared GPU Memory” in Task Manager?
• What Is Windows Efficiency Mode? - The Green Leaf Icon and How to Turn It Off
• Why Is RDP Sluggish on a Fast Connection? — Investigating Input, Rendering, and the Network Separately

References

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Frequently Asked Questions

Questions commonly asked at the time of consultation about the topic of this article.

Should hardware acceleration be on or off?

Leave it on as a rule. Microsoft's documentation tells you to check that this setting is on when videos won't play in Edge or CPU usage is high. Turn it off only to find out whether a fault such as a blank white window or garbled display is caused by GPU processing.

If turning it off fixed the problem, can I leave it off?

Treat it as a temporary workaround. Microsoft advises that if turning it off in Edge fixes the problem, you update the GPU driver and then turn the setting back on. If you leave it off, the CPU takes over video playback and other work, and the CPU load goes up.

Why does the Chrome setting name differ from what articles and search results say?

Because the help page and the screen use different wording. Google's help calls it “Use hardware acceleration when available”, while Chromium's display string is “Use graphics acceleration when available”. Both refer to the same item on chrome://settings/system.

Can I turn off GPU hardware acceleration in the new Teams?

As of November 3, 2026, I could not find any Microsoft documentation describing how to change this setting in the new Teams. Forums describe editing a settings file or launch options, but these are not methods Microsoft recommends, so this article does not recommend them.

Is it the same thing as Windows' “Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling”?

No. The browser and Office settings decide whether that app uses the GPU. Windows' GPU scheduling setting (HAGS) switches how work handed to the GPU is managed, and turning it off does not stop apps from using the GPU.

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Go Komura

Representative of KomuraSoft LLC

Focused on Windows software development, technical consulting, and bug investigation, with particular strength in projects where existing assets remain and in investigating failures whose cause is hard to see.