How to disable hardware acceleration on Microsoft Edge

• To disable hardware acceleration, open Microsoft Edge > Settings > System and turn off the “Use graphics acceleration when available” toggle switch.
• You can turn on the toggle switch to re-enable the feature at any time.

On Windows 11 (and 10), Microsoft Edge comes with hardware acceleration, a feature that enables the browser to access the graphics card on the computer to speed up specific tasks and improve the overall user experience. However, depending on your computer configuration, hardware acceleration can negatively affect the experience by preventing visual elements from displaying correctly.

If you get menus and dialog boxes not rendering correctly, a green screen appears when playing a video on Microsoft Edge, or there are rendering issues on a virtual machine, disabling hardware acceleration can resolve the problem.

In this guide, I will teach you the steps to disable hardware acceleration on Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 or 11. (If you use Google Chrome, you can disable access to the graphics card with these instructions.)

• Disable hardware acceleration on Microsoft Edge
• Enable hardware acceleration on Microsoft Edge

Disable hardware acceleration on Microsoft Edge

To disable hardware acceleration on Microsoft Edge, use these steps:

1. Open Microsoft Edge.

2. Click the Settings and More (three-dotted) button on the top-right corner.

3. Click on Settings.

4. Click on System.

5. Turn off the “Use graphics acceleration when available” toggle switch under the “System” section to disable hardware acceleration.

   

   Quick tip: If you are not able to navigate the settings due to visual rendering problems, you can use this path to access the system settings: edge://settings/system.

6. Click the Restart button.

Once you complete the steps, menus and visual elements should render correctly on Microsoft Edge.

Enable hardware acceleration on Microsoft Edge

To enable hardware acceleration on Microsoft Edge, use these steps:

1. Open Microsoft Edge.

2. Click the Settings and More (three-dotted) button on the top-right corner.

3. Click on Settings.

4. Click on System.

5. Turn on the “Use graphics acceleration when available” toggle switch under the “System” section to enable hardware acceleration.

   

6. Click the Restart button.

After you complete the steps, the browser will offload some processes to the graphics card instead of using the processor exclusively.