en-US

Disable hardware acceleration for Office in Application Guard

Supported on: At least Windows Server 2016, Windows 10

Registry

HKCU software\policies\microsoft\office\16.0\common\security\applicationguard

Value name: disablehardwareacceleration

Enabled: disablehardwareacceleration = 1

Disabled: disablehardwareacceleration = 0

Description

This policy setting controls whether Office in Application Guard uses hardware or software acceleration to render graphics. If you enable this setting, Application Guard uses software-based (CPU) rendering and won’t load any third-party graphics drivers or interact with any connected graphics hardware. Important: Be aware that disabling or not configuring this policy setting with potentially compromised graphics devices or drivers might pose a risk to the user's device. If you disable or don't configure this setting, Application Guard uses Hyper-V to access supported, high-security rendering graphics hardware (GPUs). These GPUs improve rendering performance and battery life while using Application Guard, particularly for video playback and other graphics-intensive operations. If you disable or don't configure this setting without connecting any high-security rendering graphics hardware, Application Guard will automatically revert to software-based (CPU) rendering. Note: This policy setting only applies to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise.