How To Turn Off Hardware Acceleration in Opera & Opera GX

For heavy activities, it is better to enable hardware acceleration

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Opera browser makes use of hardware acceleration to boost its performance. This helps maintain its lightweight and speed while taking on heavy activities and tasks.

Hardware acceleration is used to offload tasks from the CPU to other hardware devices to not affect its performance. In an ideal situation, it is a great option. However, some users often encounter issues because some sites are not optimized for them.

Hence, it can disrupt your PC performance. In some rare cases, it can even cause your PC to crash. In this article, we will address how to disable and enable it.

Does Opera have hardware acceleration?

Yes, Opera has hardware acceleration. In fact, it is enabled by default especially on the Opera GX because it is good for gaming.

Since Opera is a chromium browser, it shares this feature with other browsers like Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and others.

What is browser hardware acceleration?

Browser Hardware Acceleration is a feature used to boost browser performance. It helps to offload tasks from the CPU to other hardware devices so it doesn’t affect the browsing experience.

Most browsers are exceptionally lightweight these days and hardware acceleration is a major contributor to that.

Should I enable hardware acceleration in Opera?

This is subjective and dependent on what you use your browser for. If you use your Opera browser for gaming or heavy activities, it is important to enable hardware acceleration.

However, for random users, may be unnecessary to enable it. You can also disable it if your browser is slow or your PC is running on a low spec.

Continue reading to find out how to turn off hardware acceleration in Opera & Opera GX.

How do I enable hardware acceleration in the Opera browser?

  1. Launch the Opera browser and click on the Menu button.
  2. Select Settings from the drop-down options.
  3. Choose Advanced and click browser from the left pane.
  4. Locate the System section and toggle on the icon beside the Use hardware acceleration when available.
  5. Restart your browser.

This will instantly activate the hardware acceleration and you should see the differences immediately in your browsing.

What happens if I disable hardware acceleration?

Since the hardware acceleration is meant to shed the workload on the CPU, disabling it will affect the browser. Firstly, most pages will freeze and stutter especially when multiple tabs are on.

Also, there might be a bottleneck in performance. The browser may also crash easily if the CPU is burdened with too much load.

How do I disable hardware acceleration in Opera & Opera GX?

  1. Launch the Opera or Opera GX browser and click on the Menu button.
  2. Select Settings from the drop-down options.
  3. Choose Advanced and click browser from the left pane.
  4. Locate the System section and toggle off the icon beside the Use hardware acceleration when available.
  5. Restart your browser.

These are all the information you need to know about the Opera hardware acceleration.

You can check out our article on Twitch hardware acceleration here. Also, our guide on how to fix your browser’s high CPU usage may also be helpful.

You can leave your questions and suggestions in the comments section below. We’d like to hear from you.

More about the topics: Opera Web Browser