Washed out colors when hardware acceleration is enabled

Browser Support Desktop Support
, ,
1

Description:
After updating Brave to version 1.83.109, colors appear washed out when hardware acceleration is enabled. This issue didn’t happen in the previous version of Brave on the same system.

Disabling hardware acceleration resolves the issue, and colors display as expected.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Launch Brave on Arch Linux (Plasma, Wayland).

  2. Ensure hardware acceleration is enabled in settings.

  3. Visit any website (e.g. YouTube).

  4. Observe the display quality — colors appear dull or washed out.

Expected Behavior:
Colors should display accurately and vibrantly, as they did in previous versions with hardware acceleration enabled.

Actual Behavior:
Colors appear dull or washed out when hardware acceleration is turned on.

System Info:

  • Brave Version: 1.83.109

  • Operating System: Arch Linux

  • Desktop Environment: Plasma 6.4.5 (Wayland)

  • GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT

  • Driver: Mesa 25.2.4-arch1.1

Screenshots:

  1. Hardware Acceleration ON – Brave 1.83.109

    Screenshot_20251007_005736
    Screenshot_20251007_0057361920×1080 121 KB

  2. Hardware Acceleration OFF – Brave 1.83.109

    Screenshot_20251007_010232
    Screenshot_20251007_0102321920×1080 126 KB

  3. Hardware Acceleration ON – Brave 1.82.172

    Screenshot_20251007_010740
    Screenshot_20251007_0107401920×1080 124 KB

Additional Information:

It may be hard to see but it is specially noticeable in black portions of the screen as black appears grey. It also affects the elements of the browser itself eg. the purple of the private tab.

2

Exactly same behavior for me, on any chromium-based browser (Plasma 6.4, 7900 XTX amdgpu). Workaround:

–disable-features=WaylandWpColorManagerV1

3

I’m having the same exact issue. The person named “mvgom” gave something that did help, but after my own tinkering

If their argument didn’t work, try this one

–disable-features=WaylandWpColorManagerV1 --force-color-profile=sRGB

(specs: gpu model: Intel Arc A380, gpu driver: Mesa 25.2.4-cachyos1.2, plasma version: plasmashell 6.4.5, kernel: 6.17.1-2-cachyos, brave version: Brave Browser 141.1.83.112, i also use Wayland, not X11)

4

hey, I have the same issue.

I think that this issue started appearing after chromium merged support for HDR on Wayland.

Something interesting I’ve noticed is that I only have this issue on KDE Plasma Wayland, I don’t have this issue on Cosmic or GNOME, where even if I have hardware acceleration turned on, colors are not washed out, so this makes me believe that it might be a KDE issue.

This is what it looks like right now on KDE Plasma with hardware acceleration on:

Screenshot_20251012_194953
Screenshot_20251012_1949531920×1080 193 KB

5

I’ve opened a bug report to the KDE Plasma bugzilla because this seems to happen only on Plasma and not other Wayland desktops like GNOME or COSMIC.

6

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.