Electron 7, disable-gpu flag no longer working

[t57ser]

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Issue Details

• Electron Version:
  • 7.0.0
• Operating System:
  • Windows 10
• Last Known Working Electron version:
  • 6

Expected Behavior

GPU should be disabled and the chrome window should have no "Intermediate D3D Window" child

Actual Behavior

GPU is enabled

To Reproduce

app.commandLine.appendSwitch("disable-gpu");

Additional Information

It works when using app.disableHardwareAcceleration() but that has a different effect. See:

Electron 7 with app.disableHardwareAcceleration():

Electron 6 with disable-gpu:

[pushkin-]

I believe that something like this broke in Electron 5 and I had to do the following to work around this (not tested in Electron 7):

app.disableHardwareAcceleration();
app.commandLine.appendSwitch("disable-software-rasterizer");

[pushkin-]

Related issue here.

Suggests adding the "in-process-gpu" switch. This does prevent the GPU process from starting, but the chrome://gpu page is a lot greener than I expected with all three options (in-process-gpu, disable-software-rasterizer, app.disableHardwareAcceleration)

This is also a problem in Electron 8.

[pushkin-]

Actually the green stuff makes sense, I just didn't understand what in-process-gpu actually does. I'm guessing that's not suitable for you.

[pushkin-]

Did some more investigation.

Passing the --disable-gpu and --disable-software-rasterizer switches to Chrome 80 prevents the GPU process from starting.

Passing these switches via app.commandLine.appendSwitch in addition to calling app.disableHardwareAcceleration() prevents the GPU process from starting in Electron 6.1.9 (latest Electron 6 patch), but stopped working in Electron 7.0.0-beta.1 (earliest Electron 7).

The Chromium version between the two Electron versions changed from 76.0.3809.146 to 78.0.3866.0. Maybe something in Chromium broke this.

When loading chrome://gpu in Electron 6 vs 7beta:
"Metal" disabled in 6; not present in 7
"Multiple Raster Threads" disabled in 6; enabled in 7
"Surface Control" disabled in 6; not present in 7
"Surface Synchronization" enabled in 6; not present in 7
"WebGL/GL2" disabled in 6; "software only, hardware acceleration unavailable" in 7

[pushkin-]

It looks like as of Electron 9:

app.disableHardwareAcceleration();
app.commandLine.appendSwitch("disable-software-rasterizer");

successfully prevent the GPU process from spawning. Could someone double check this?

The disable-gpu switch still doesn't do that, so I guess the main issue remains.

[Syed-Umair]

Hi team,

Any update on this, It is also not working in electron 8.x

[t57ser]

The flag seems to be working again,
latest 8: not working
latest 9, 10, 11: working

[pushkin-]

@t57ser For me, it that switch still doesn't turn off the GPU process in Electron 11.

[t57ser]

@pushkin- That's weird, this is the code I tried:

const electron = require("electron");
const path = require("path");

const init = () => {
	let browserWindow2 = new electron.BrowserWindow({
		show: true,
		x: 500,
	});

	browserWindow2.webContents.loadURL("http://www.google.com").then(() => {
	});
};
electron.app.commandLine.appendSwitch("disable-gpu");
electron.app.on("ready", () => {
	init();
});

I see that no gpu process spawned.

[electron-triage]

The Electron version reported on this issue is no longer supported. See our supported versions documentation.

If this is still reproducible on a supported version, please open a new issue with any other new information that a maintainer should know.

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and helping to make Electron better! Your help is appreciated.

[pushkin-]

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