Hardware Acceleration in Chrome
Enable GPU video decoding and Wayland rendering in Chrome and Chromium browsers.
By default, Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Edge, and Electron apps) often decode video on the CPU and render through XWayland. Turning on hardware acceleration cuts power draw and frees the CPU during video playback — noticeably on laptops.
1. Install a VA-API driver
You need the right video-acceleration driver for your GPU:
# Intel (Gen 8+)
sudo pacman -S intel-media-driver
# AMD and older Intel
sudo pacman -S libva-mesa-driver
# NVIDIA (proprietary driver): nvidia-utils provides VA-API via nvidia-vaapi-driver
sudo pacman -S libva-nvidia-driver2. Turn on the browser flags
Open chrome://flags and set:
- Preferred Ozone platform (
#ozone-platform-hint) → Auto — renders natively on Wayland. - Hardware-accelerated video decode (
#enable-vaapi) → Enabled.
Restart the browser.
3. Verify
Open chrome://gpu and check that Video Decode is listed as Hardware
accelerated. While playing a video, intel_gpu_top or nvtop should show
decode activity on the GPU rather than the CPU spiking.
If flags don't stick, launch the browser with the equivalent switches instead,
e.g. --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder --ozone-platform-hint=auto. The
CachyOS guide
and Arch Wiki: Chromium
cover per-browser quirks.