Today, I encountered an unusual problem on my MacBook Pro 16" 2019 when I woke it from sleep. The Chrome browser displayed strange blue noise/lines on the screen, as shown in the image below:
Initially, I thought it could be a temporary glitch and reloaded the page, but the issue persisted. I remembered facing a similar problem a few weeks ago, which was resolved by rebooting. However, I didn’t want to rely on this solution as I prefer to avoid frequent reboots.
To investigate further, I observed that the problem also occurred in an Electron-based app called Workflowy. However, not all Chrome tabs were affected. Seeking a solution, I tweeted about the issue and received advice from a helpful individual on the internet. They suggested disabling hardware acceleration in the Chrome settings.
Taking their advice, I navigated to the Chrome settings and found the option “Use hardware acceleration when available.” I disabled this option, restarted Chrome, and the problem vanished:
Although the issue was resolved, I re-enabled hardware acceleration to fully utilize Chrome’s browsing speed benefits like leveraging the powerful GPU for rendering animations and enabling WebGL features. It’s worth noting that other users have also reported this issue through Google Support channels, yet no official fix has been released yet.
Tags: Chrome blue noise, Chrome rendering problem, hardware acceleration, Chrome settings, WebGL, MacBook Pro