Videos suddenly super laggy when window is maximized (hardware acceleration no longer working)

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Description of the issue:
How can this issue be reproduced?

  1. Open a video on any online video streaming service (YouTube, ESPN, MLB, local TV providers)

  2. Maximize browser window

  3. Video lags horribly

Expected result: Video should be smooth and proper like it was a few days ago.

Brave Version( check About Brave): 1.82.172 (tested BOTH flatpak and native, problem in both)

Additional Information: This just started happening recently, a few days ago. Local 4k video files play just fine but online streaming is broken.

Fedora 42 KDE Linux, RX580 GPU, tested in both flatpak and native version. Problem exists in both.

The issue is most prevalent when simply maximizing a window that has a video in it (i.e. playing a normal YouTube video in-window, not fullscreened). The larger the physical size of the video, the worse the lag.

YouTube’s fullscreen mode somehow overcomes whatever is causing the problem (I.e. fullscreen has no lag but Maximized in-window lags badly), but other video sites do not.

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Any attention to this? It’s a decently significant problem.

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@DarthZiplock the issue isn’t being widely reported and most likely would be device specific. Let me ask, have you tried the more common and simple troubleshooting steps like below?

  • Update your browser. (if you haven’t already, 1.83.109 is most common)
  • Make sure graphics drivers are updated
  • Open in private to see if it matters
  • Attempt on a new browser profile
  • Turn off graphics acceleration, located at Brave’s Settings → System
  • Test in Brave Beta or Brave Nightly
  • Check to see if the issue also happens in Chrome
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@Saoiray

I am on 1.83.109, just updated a few minutes ago. No change.

Graphics drivers are current.

Private window doesn’t fix.

Different profile doesn’t fix.

Graphics acceleration on/off makes no difference.

Not sure how to install beta/nightly…

Issue DOES occur in “Chromium” browser installed from Fedora repo.

Issue DOES NOT occur in Firefox.

No other graphically-intensive task on my system has any problems (and I have some games that are VERY sensitive to graphics drivers, they run perfectly).

Can 100% conclude that the issue is related to Brave/Chromium.

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@DarthZiplock go to brave://flags and look at Choose ANGLE graphics backend. Make sure it’s on Default or perhaps try D3D9. Some people lately have been saying D3D9 is fixing some problems they have been having.

What’s weird is that’s the reverse of what it was back in August, where a Chromium update broke things when it was on D3D9, but now somehow it’s fixing something for some. :man_shrugging:

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@Saoiray “Choose ANGLE graphics backend” doesn’t exist in my chrome://flags menu.

All I have is “Default ANGLE vulkan” and “Vulkan from ANGLE” and both are set to Defautl (disabled).

ALSO just noticed that in about://gpu my hardware acceleration is gone. It says software only now. Last I checked it was enabled, and I haven’t changed anything since then.

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@Saoiray Based on some internet searching, I added the following launch options:

–use-gl=angle --use-angle=vulkan --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks,Vulkan,DefaultANGLEVulkan,VulkanFromANGLE --ozone-platform-hint=auto --ignore-gpu-blocklist

This got my about://gpu page to show hardware acceleratio as enabled again, but the laggy video problem persists. Further down on my gpu page it also says webgpu and gpu_compositing are disabled.

Attached is my full report.

about-gpu-2025-10-05T22-01-43-637Z.txt (71.7 KB)

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@DarthZiplock apologies, looking again that seems to be more just a Windows thing. I also shouldn’t have mentioned since you said graphics acceleration didn’t make a difference.

image
image723×122 5.51 KB

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@DarthZiplock I’m not quite sure where to pinpoint the issue here and may need to wait for @Mattches perhaps to follow-up. The idea that you were able to reproduce this on Chromium suggests it’s going to need an upstream fix.

In terms of Beta or Nightly, you grab from where it mentions. At https://brave.com/linux/ it shows Beta and Nightly on top. Click it and it tells you how to install. These run as different browsers, just are a few versions ahead of the normal “Release” or “Stable” version of Brave.

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@Saoiray Are there any further diagnostics I can run in the meantime to find out why my GPU compositing/acceleration suddenly isn’t working?

Was the gpu report file I uploaded useful at all?

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@DarthZiplock I’m not good with those things. About the best I can do is like I saw someone else do earlier, which would be to feed it through AI. Otherwise is where I tagged in Mattches, who is one of the people from Brave who knows much more than I.

If unaware, I’m just another user. My knowledge is a bit limited but I’m often able to guide people to figuring out the core of issues and either stumble upon solutions or help find existing solutions that have been shared before. Otheriwse I just triage and get the basic info so people who are more knowledgeable have everything they need to guide people to answers or to relay to the devs to get fixes done.

Feeding the information to ChatGPT, it does say everything below. I can’t promise it’s all that accurate or helpful, but might be a starting point if nothing else:

ChatGPT Answer:

Got it. Your chrome://gpu dump shows the smoking gun:

Gpu compositing has been disabled and the log says
'--ozone-platform=wayland' is not compatible with Vulkan. Consider switching to '--ozone-platform=x11' or disabling Vulkan
Result: Brave falls back to software compositing, which explains why maximized in-window video stutters while fullscreen looks fine.

Here is the fastest path to fix it on Fedora KDE with RX 580.

Fix option A. Keep Wayland, disable Vulkan and ANGLE Vulkan

  1. In the address bar open chrome://flags and set these to Disabled

    • Vulkan
    • Vulkan from ANGLE
    • Default ANGLE Vulkan
    • Choose ANGLE graphics backend → OpenGL
      Relaunch Brave.

  2. Verify in chrome://gpu

    • Compositing: Hardware accelerated
    • Direct Rendering Display Compositor: Enabled

If that reads correctly, the lag should be gone.

Fix option B. Start Brave on XWayland without Vulkan

If A does not stick due to Flatpak or wrapper flags, start Brave with explicit switches.

Native RPM:

brave --ozone-platform=x11 \
      --disable-features=Vulkan,VulkanFromANGLE,DefaultANGLEVulkan \
      --use-angle=gl

Flatpak:

flatpak run com.brave.Browser \
  --ozone-platform=x11 \
  --disable-features=Vulkan,VulkanFromANGLE,DefaultANGLEVulkan \
  --use-angle=gl

Then check chrome://gpu again for Hardware accelerated compositing.

Why this works

  • You are on Wayland. Your current Brave command line forces ANGLE over Vulkan plus Vulkan compositing. The log shows Vulkan surface creation fails on Wayland, which disables GPU compositing. Disabling Vulkan or moving to XWayland avoids that failure.
  • VA-API decode is already working, so the video engine is fine. The stall is in the compositor path.

Optional cleanups

  • If you previously flipped “Hardware acceleration” in Settings, set it back to On after doing the steps above.
  • Leave “GPU rasterization” and “Out of process rasterization” at Default.
  • If you use KDE fractional scaling and still see hiccups, test at 100 percent scale to rule out a compositor quirk.

If you want, paste the new chrome://gpu top section after a relaunch and I will sanity check that everything is green.

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@Saoiray Switching to X11 sovled the problem!

However, that creates a new problem as I believe X11 is slated to be phased out and Wayland will be the only compositing option on Fedora in the near future.

So it’s something in the way Chromium is talking to Wayland, maybe something broken inside Wayland itself.

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Eeeyikes running Brave in X11 is a laggy mess. Definitely need Wayland fixed.

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@DarthZiplock I just started doing some investigating and I’m curious;

From https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40281778#comment35

Probably the same issue also in https://g-issues.chromium.org/issues/339022994. I narrowed this down specifically to XWayland when chrome is not set to ‘Wayland’ mode via Ozone, but the desktop environment is Wayland. You should use all wayland or all x11, but not a mix of them to avoid this bug.

The issue occurs regardless of gpu acceleration settings

And then at https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40281778#comment46

--ozone-platform=wayland does make Chrome experience much better: better scrolling and response on other tabs on other windows!

This seems to be resolution for https://issues.chromium.org/issues/381805378 as well

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@Saoiray No dice, added --ozone-platform=wayland to launch flags and my GPU page still reports that only software decoding is being used.

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This reddit thread says it’s a known recent issue that’s causing video issues cross-platform.

Guess I’ll just wait for a Chromium update and cancel my distro-hopping plans.

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I know I tagged @Mattches and am hoping he can read through. Not sure if he’ll have any ideas.

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@Saoiray thanks for tagging – catching up now. Have a meeting in a minute but will reply when I get back

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I’ve got a thread on this going on the Fedora forums. What we’ve found so far is that, when using Wayland, Brave/Chromium doesn’t see my GPU or Mesa driver properly.

Details are in this thread: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/wayland-and-chromium-brave-gpu-acceleration-is-suddenly-broken-videos-hella-laggy/

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Yeah this does look like something that we may need to wait for an upstream fix for. Asking a couple devs now to confirm

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