Firefox Hardware acceleration

Firefox Hardware acceleration on Fedora

Firefox on Fedora supports hardware acceleration on Linux so let's look how to configure it and diagnose potential issues. This guide is adjusted for Fedora only and may not work for stock Mozilla binaries or other distros.

Web page rendering

Accelerated web page rendering is supported on both X11 and Wayland backends via. WebRender.

You can check hardware acceleration state at about:support page, look at Compositing row. If there's WebRender, you're running on hardware. If there's WebRender (software) you're on non-accelerated backend.

WebRedner Firefox setup

Web page rendering on Wayland

Hardware acceleration should work out-of-the-box on Wayland. If not please file a bug for it.

Web page rendering on X11

X11 backend can tun in two modes - EGL and XGL. You should be on EGL unless you're running NVIDIA proprietary drivers.

Video decoding

Hardware accelerated video decoding (for video playback or for WebRTC) is available on Intel/AMD via. VA-API for both X11(EGL) and Wayland and can be enabled by preferences at about:config.

Right now it's blocked by RDD Firefox sandbox. RDD is a new sandboxed process used for safe video decoding. You can disable it which reverts Firefox back to state before RDD implementation which means video decoding will run under content sandbox which is less restrictive.

Video decoding on AMD

Accelerated video decoding works well on AMD as free drivers are available. You can enable it by these steps:

• Verify you're running on HW accelerated backend (WebRender) under Wayland or X11/EGL at about:support.
• Install install ffmpeg, libva and libva-utils from RPM Fusion repository.
• Run vainfo on terminal to verify that VA-API works.
• At about:config page set media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled to true and media.rdd-process.enabled to false. Warning: Disabling the RDD process sandbox is a security risk!
• Restart browser.
• You may install enhanced-h264ify Firefox extension to disable non-accelerated video formats.
• More info is here.

Video decoding on Intel

Accelerated video decoding works well on Intel as free drivers are available. There are two drivers for Intel cards, libva-intel-driver (provides i965_drv_video.so) and libva-intel-hybrid-driver (hybrid_drv_video.so). Firefox works with libva-intel-driver (i965_drv_video.so) only, libva-intel-hybrid-driver is broken due to Firefox sandboxing issues. I strongly recommend to avoid it at all cost and don’t disable content sandbox for it, your web browser will be completely naked then.

You can enable VA-API on Intel by these steps:

• Verify you're running on HW accelerated backend (WebRender) under Wayland or X11/EGL at about:support.
• Install install ffmpeg, libva and libva-utils from RPM Fusion repository.
• Install libva-intel-driver package.
• Run vainfo on terminal to verify that VA-API works. If VA-API is disabled you're running on new hardware and you need libva-intel-hybrid-driver. Don't use that until content sandbox is fixed.
• At about:config page set media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled to true and media.rdd-process.enabled to false. Warning: Disabling the RDD process sandbox is a security risk!
• Restart browser.
• You may install enhanced-h264ify Firefox extension to disable non-accelerated video formats.
• More info is here.

Video decoding on NVIDIA

Please buy some real Linux hardware.

Video encoding

Hardware accelerated video encoding (for WebRTC for instance) is not supported/implemented in Firefox, no matter which preference you set at about:config page.