Part of CachyOS Wiki Notes. From the official CachyOS wiki (last updated 2026-09-18).

Browser Hardware Acceleration

Prerequisite: a Chromium-based browser (Chrome, Brave, Ungoogled Chromium, Edge, Vivaldi) plus up-to-date Mesa (AMD/Intel) or NVIDIA drivers with Vulkan/VA-API/VDPAU.

Optional monitors: amdgpu_top (AMD), nvtop (Intel Lunar Lake), intel-gpu-tools (pre-Lunar Lake).

How the flags work

Flags live in ~/.config/[browser]-flags.conf:

• Chromium — ~/.config/chromium-flags.conf
• Brave — ~/.config/brave-flags.conf
• Ungoogled Chromium — ~/.config/ungoogled-chromium-flags.conf

Brave/Edge/Vivaldi/Opera may additionally need the Exec= line of a .desktop file edited — copy it from /usr/share/applications/ to ~/.local/share/applications/ first.

Flow: edit the flags file (e.g. nano ~/.config/chrome-flags.conf) → paste flags → restart the browser → verify at chrome://gpu (or brave://gpu).

Verify decode is actually engaged: amdgpu_top → watch the media section during playback (0% = not engaged).

Known-good configurations (verbatim from the wiki)

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, Google Chrome — ~/.config/chrome-flags.conf:

--use-gl=angle
--use-angle=vulkan
--enable-features=Vulkan,VulkanFromANGLE,DefaultANGLEVulkan,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoEncoder,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks,UseMultiPlaneFormatForHardwareVideo

NVIDIA RTX 4090, Vivaldi — ~/.config/vivaldi-stable.conf:

--enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL

or in /usr/share/applications/vivaldi-stable.desktop:

Exec=/usr/bin/vivaldi-stable --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL %U

AMD Radeon RX 550, Ungoogled Chromium — ~/.config/chromium-flags.conf:

--enable-wayland-ime
--enable-features=AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoEncoder,WaylandSessionManagement,WaylandTextInputV3,WaylandUiScale,WaylandWindowDecorations

NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti, Brave — ~/.config/brave-flags.conf:

--enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoEncoder,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks

AMD RX 7700 XT, Brave (DaJRJesus) — ~/.config/brave-flags.conf:

--ignore-gpu-blocklist
--enable-gpu-rasterization
--enable-zero-copy
--enable-features=AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoEncoder,CanvasOopRasterization,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks,UseMultiPlaneFormatForHardwareVideo

AMD RX 9070 XT, Google Chrome (naknak) — ~/.config/chrome-flags.conf:

--ignore-gpu-blocklist
--enable-gpu-rasterization
--enable-zero-copy
--use-gl=angle
--use-angle=vulkan
--enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoEncoder,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks,UseMultiPlaneFormatForHardwareVideo,Vulkan,VulkanFromANGLE,DefaultANGLEVulkan

--ignore-gpu-blocklist is required here: RDNA 4 may be blocklisted.

NVIDIA RTX 5090, Vivaldi (icetea) — ~/.config/vivaldi-stable.conf:

--enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,VaapiOnNvidiaGPUs,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks
--use-gl=angle
--use-angle=gl
--disable-features=Vulkan
--ignore-gpu-blocklist
--ozone-platform=wayland

Requires libva-nvidia-driver. VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks is key on NVIDIA; AV1 decode is broken in libva-nvidia-driver 0.0.17.

NVIDIA RTX 5070, Google Chrome (pisyukaev) — ~/.config/chrome-flags.conf:

--enable-features=AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,VaapiVideoDecoder,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks,VaapiOnNvidiaGPUs
--ignore-gpu-blocklist

Requires libva-nvidia-driver + nvidia-utils. VaapiOnNvidiaGPUs is the critical flag — Chrome otherwise blocklists NVIDIA in vaapi_wrapper.cc.

AMD RX 7600, Brave Origin (RyuuPendragon) — ~/.config/brave-origin-flags.conf:

--ignore-gpu-blocklist
--enable-gpu-rasterization
--enable-zero-copy
--enable-features=AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoEncoder,CanvasOopRasterization,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks,UseMultiPlaneFormatForHardwareVideo

NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti, Vivaldi (Peek4Boo7) — ~/.config/vivaldi-stable.conf:

--enable-features=AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,VaapiOnNvidiaGPUs

Driver 615.71.09 / libva-nvidia-driver 0.0.18-1.1; VaapiVideoDecoder and VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks are not required at that driver version.

The wiki page carries more community submissions than are copied here — check it for your exact GPU/browser pair rather than guessing flags.

Related: Dual GPU Setup, CachyOS Filesystems.