Arch Linux

Cvlc

Member

Registered: 2020-03-26

Posts: 295

Hardware accleration in Electron app (Signal)

Hi,

Is there anyway to have Electron apps like Signal use hardware acceleration ? I've found that my computer heats up during long video calls, and maybe using the GPU would help.

The Hardware video acceleration wiki page does not cover Electron, but from reading the github issues it looks like it should be using hardware acceleration by default. It's definitely not on my system though (checked with intel_gpu_top), but I don't know where to start to troubleshoot it. Especially since Signal seems to be using its own electron. I've tried running Signal both in Wayland and (default) xWayland mode.

Thanks for any tips !

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,354

Re: Hardware accleration in Electron app (Signal)

"Sometimes":
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 7#p2089527

Have you tried running signal on Xorg, though?
And does "vainfo" suggest that vaapi generally works? Does it work w/ mpv?

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Cvlc

Member

Registered: 2020-03-26

Posts: 295

Re: Hardware accleration in Electron app (Signal)

Thanks;

No luck with xorg, I tried different settings from the post above but no luck either. 

vaapi otherwise works perfectly with mpv/vlc/firefox/ffmpeg etc...

I have to go away for a few days but I might try the flatpak version of Signal when I'm back to see if that makes any difference.