Troubleshooting Google Chrome Performance Issues

Description

<Description of the standard or policy>

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to provide a standardized troubleshooting step to resolve common performance degradation, unexpected crashes, or excessive resource usage (high CPU/memory) experienced while using the Google Chrome browser. These issues are often caused by incompatibility between Chrome’s default Hardware Acceleration feature and certain graphics drivers or older hardware configurations across campus.

Standard/Policy

Disabling Hardware Acceleration forces Chrome to use your computer’s main processor (CPU) instead of the specialized graphics processor (GPU) to handle page rendering. This shifts the workload and often eliminates stability problems caused by graphics driver conflicts.

CAUTION: This may slightly reduce graphical smoothness on media-heavy sites, but it is the recommended fix for system stability.

1. Open the Google Chrome browser.

2. Click the three vertical dots (⋮) icon in the top-right corner.

3. Click Settings in the drop-down menu.

4. In the left-hand menu of the Settings page, click System.

5. In the System settings pane, locate the setting that reads:

   Use hardware acceleration when available

6. Click the blue toggle switch to the Off position. The switch will turn gray when disabled.

   1. Use hardware acceleration when available[Toggle Off]

7. A blue Relaunch button will appear next to the setting. Click this button to restart the browser and apply the changes.

8. Note: Chrome will automatically reopen any tabs you had open.

9. Verification and Next Steps

   1. Verification: After the relaunch, test the browser by using a video or resource-intensive web page. If the performance issues are resolved, no further action is needed.

   2. Reverting the Change: If your browser performance decreases or new issues arise, you can re-enable the feature by repeating the steps and toggling the switch back On.