White border appearing around drop down menus on Linux

[Brave-Matt]

Description

After the update to version 1.67.115 on Linux, there is a white border that appears around/behind browser drop down menus, such as the main menu or bookmark folders, etc.

Steps to reproduce

1. Launch Brave while using Linux/Kubuntu/i3
2. Click hamburger menu or bookmarks bar folder
3. Resulting drop-down menu has a white border around the shadow gradient

Actual result

White border/background appears

Expected result

Should be no boarder/background behind drop down menus

Reproduces how often

Easily reproduced

Brave version (brave://version info)

v1.67.115

Channel information

• release (stable)
• beta
• nightly

Reproducibility

• with Brave Shields disabled
• with Brave Rewards disabled
• in the latest version of Chrome

Miscellaneous information

Original user report:
https://community.brave.com/t/white-border-around-dropdown-menus-navigation-menu/553579

[suryaanshah]

can confirm the same on v1.67.116 LinuxMint

[dmitrykvasnikov]

The same on Arch / i3 (GTK themed) with v1.67.116

[pythys]

I also confirm this bug. Arch linux on i3wm

[Utsunom1ya]

Garuda/Archlinux with Hyprland.
6.9.4-zen1-1-zen kernel.

[GoWeasel]

I also confirm this bug. Arch linux on i3wm

• same on Manjaro XFCE
• • brave-browser 1.67.116-1 [Installed])
• • 6.9.3-3 Kernel

[rmdhnreza]

Chrome issue 40937108

TL;DR: On X11, you need a compositor to draw shadows. xcompmgr should be enough.

[harridu]

Actually I don't think I need a compositor, losing control over the background of my desktop and introducing other weird side effects. What I do need is some checkbox in Brave to turn off a graphical gimmick I didn't ask for.

Please don't make the eye-candy mandatory. There is no such problem for Google Chrome, for example. Thank you

[pythys]

@harridu I think the problem actually originates in Chromium and not necessarily in Brave. It seems to be just more visible in Brave. When I open the menu in dark mode in Chromium I still see some "weird" white that is just more tiny. Take a look below, do you see the white corners? That's possibly the same shadow bug.

[inicula]

Why wasn't this a problem before 1.67? Did this type of menu not have shadows or what?

[harridu]

You are right, I didn't notice the white corners. It is not as distracting as Brave's giant white frame. Maybe Brave could reduce the white frame?

I would prefer to skip all that eye-candy, but I understand that this would be an enhancement request to chromium.

[pythys]

@harridu Fixing the border might be fixing a mistake with another mistake. The root cause is shadow rendering and I would imagine that's what the brave team should attend to.

If you are annoyed from this bug (as I am) then downgrading is a simple quick solution. I downgraded to version 125.1.66.120 and as the screenshot below shows things are pretty peachy at the moment.

[Cthulu201]

I agree we shouldn't be required to have a compositor, but xcompmgr looks better than picom on my Arch/i3 setup. FWIW in the interim.

[egbastos666]

I completely disagree that composite usage should be mandatory. That's a complete useless "eye-candy" feature that brings nothing to the end user rather than something "beautiful". There are a lot of linux users that really doesn't care about this kind of things, that uses i3wm, that uses fluxbox exactly because they are simple and use minimal resources and we don't want to run an additional component just to "looks pretty". I think that the best way to handle that is to include a flag on chromium that makes possible to disable composite usage run without any shadow or this kind of things

[pythys]

@egbastos666 I would suggest that introducing a compositor is a discussion in Chromium. Brave as a derivative product is different flavor of Chromium but it is Chromium.

I'm also not sure how "easy" would it be to override chromium in that regard, but I would imagine a much easier solution is to solve whatever needs solving in Chromium.

[Cthulu201]

I'm seeing a black border in Brave now. Chromium doesn't seem to need a compositor on my Linux box:
Version 126.0.6478.114 (Official Build) Arch Linux (64-bit)