Despite having a brand new computer, encountering unexpected issues with basic tasks can still happen. This was precisely the case for me when I tried to blur my background on Google Meet. However, Meet refused to cooperate and insisted that I enable hardware acceleration, even though it was already enabled by default.

Just to be sure I checked the usual process to turn on/off hardware acceleration:

• Launch Chrome, then select “Menu” > “Settings“.
• Click on the “System” option in the left menu.
• Toggle “Use hardware acceleration when available” on or off as desired.

Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, hardware acceleration had already been enabled, prompting me to investigate further. After some searching, I came across a helpful tip to access the following URL and verify if the “Major Performance Caveat” is indicated as “No”: https://webglreport.com/?v=2

As it turned out, in my case the there was a “Major Performance Caveat”, so I continued Googling to solve this new issue. The solution is to go into chrome://flags and to enable the “Override software rendering list” and to restart the browser.

This finally worked and now I have full hardware rendering support and a blurred background in Google Meet.