A minimal in-browser reproduction of the long-standing rendering glitch affecting Chromium-based applications on Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 with discrete GPUs.
Live demo: https://spaceagetv.github.io/chromium-gpu-bug/
Chromium's default video and compositor present path on Windows uses
DirectComposition swap chains, which Windows 11's Desktop Window Manager (DWM)
schedules through the Multi-Plane Overlay (MPO) hardware path on capable GPUs.
Starting with Windows 11 24H2 (October 2024), DWM's dynamic switching between
its Composed: Flip and Hardware Composed: Independent Flip presentation
modes regressed — partially-updating windows can freeze or tear during the
flip-mode transition.
The bug is OS-side (DWM), not in Chromium itself, but Chromium's default present strategy is what trips it. Other Chromium apps including Discord, Visual Studio Code, Obsidian, and any Electron application on Windows 11 24H2+ exhibit the same symptoms.
| Component | Status |
|---|---|
| Operating system | Windows 11 24H2 (build 26100+) or 25H2 |
| GPU | Discrete (NVIDIA / AMD Radeon non-APU / Intel Arc). Integrated GPUs (Intel UHD/Iris Xe, AMD APUs) appear largely unaffected because their MPO capabilities don't qualify for DWM's broken promotion path. |
| Browser | Any Chromium-based — Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Arc, Electron apps |
| Settings | Default. Specifically requires D3D11 ANGLE backend (default) and DirectComposition enabled (default). |
- Open https://spaceagetv.github.io/chromium-gpu-bug/ in Chrome (or Edge / any Chromium browser) on an affected machine
- Watch the animation frame counter in the top-left increment smoothly at ~60Hz
- Press Alt+Tab to a fullscreen window (game, video player, or maximized application)
- Switch back to this tab
- Repeat 2–3 times if needed — the bug doesn't always fire on the first switch
Bug present: the counter freezes at an old number while the rest of the page UI is still responsive (cursor, buttons, scrolling). Clicking the page typically resumes the counter. Sometimes parts of a previous window's overlay are visible bleeding into this page.
No bug: counter keeps incrementing across the alt-tab cycle, or resumes instantly when the window regains focus.
The page also exposes a Fullscreen toggle and an Auto-trigger mode that cycles fullscreen on/off every 10 seconds, since fullscreen transitions force DWM to re-evaluate MPO promotion and reliably trigger the regression on affected hardware.
These are end-user / sysadmin workarounds. The application-side workarounds (switching ANGLE backend, disabling hardware video decode) are vendor-specific.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers
"OverlayMinFPS"=dword:00000000
Then restart. This forces DWM to keep low-frame-rate windows in
Hardware Composed: Independent Flip mode rather than toggling between modes.
The 24H2 registry path no longer takes effect. Use:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers
"DisableOverlays"=dword:00000001
Then restart. This disables hardware overlay scheduling system-wide, which prevents DWM from promoting any swap chain to MPO and so avoids the bug entirely. Has performance implications for borderless-windowed gaming.
Visit chrome://flags/#use-angle and select D3D9 or OpenGL.
This switches Chromium's ANGLE backend off the broken D3D11 path.
Side effects vary; in particular, hardware HEVC video decode requires the
D3D11 ANGLE backend in Chromium and is lost when switching to D3D9 / GL.
- Chromium: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/429859152 — "Hardware acceleration causes stuttering on Chromium…"
- Electron: electron/electron#46206
- Microsoft: Not yet acknowledged on the official 24H2 known-issues page. 18+ months and counting.
Existing reports of this bug are mostly anecdotal screenshots in forum threads. A short, deterministic reproduction page running in vanilla Chrome — no browser flags, no third-party app — should make it easier for Chromium / Microsoft engineers to reproduce on their own hardware and prioritize a fix.
If you have a fix landing in a Chromium milestone, a Windows servicing update, or a GPU driver release, please open an issue or PR linking to it.
index.html— the reproduction pagetest-video.mp4— sample H.264 video used to trip MPO promotion (Big Buck Bunny clip, public domain, ~770KB)README.md— this fileLICENSE— MIT
MIT. The included test-video.mp4 is from the Big Buck Bunny film
(© 2008 Blender Foundation, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0).