[Tip] How to Enable or Disable New “WebRender” Feature in Mozilla Firefox

The newer versions of Mozilla Firefox web browser (v67 and later) come with a new feature called “WebRender“. This new feature has been implemented in Firefox to improve browser performance and make webpage loading super fast and smoother.

Mozilla was working on WebRender feature since 2015 and it took approx. 3 years and 8 months in releasing the feature to stable version of Firefox. This feature was available on testing versions of Firefox such as Nightly since few months.

WebRender was previously known as Quantum Render and was developed to release with Firefox Quantum in 2017 but unfortunately WebRender development was not finished on time and that’s why its release was postponed.

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WebRender feature has been designed to replace the old Compositor component (or graphics subsystem) of Firefox browser to improve Firefox performance and stability. WebRender is extremely fast and helps Firefox running web apps and services at 60 FPS or better by using GPU more effectively. It makes the rendering faster and smoother.

Now WebRender is ready for public release and Firefox 67 and later versions come with this new functionality built-in. Mozilla has activated and enabled WebRender feature for 5% lucky users only. The company is conducting A/B testing to compare performance. Mozilla has plans to roll out the feature in phases and all Firefox users will be able to enjoy and use the new feature in coming days or months.

WebRender_Compositing_Enabled_Mozilla_Firefox.png

Please note that WebRender functionality is only compatible with computer systems running Windows 10 operating system with NVIDIA and AMD graphics card (GPU) at the moment. In future it’ll become compatible with Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems. Support for other graphics cards such as Intel will also be implemented in future.

Now there might be 2 types of Firefox users:

  • One who don’t have WebRender functionality enabled in Firefox but want to forcefully enable it right now
  • Second who have WebRender functionality enabled but they are facing webpage rendering and compatibility issues and want to disable WebRender feature

Today in this article, we’ll tell you how to enable or disable WebRender feature in Firefox web browser. Fortunately, Mozilla team has provided a built-in preference/flag to manually activate or deactivate WebRender feature. Interested Firefox users can change this preference to turn on/off WebRender functionality in Firefox browser.

If you also want to manually activate and enable new WebRender feature right now in Firefox or if you already have WebRender feature enabled but want to disable it due to compatibility issues, following steps will help you:

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1. Open Mozilla Firefox and type about:config in the addressbar and press Enter. It’ll show you a warning message, click on “I accept the risk!” button. It’ll open Firefox’s hidden secret advanced configuration page i.e. about:config page.

2. Now type webrender in Search filter box and it’ll show following preference in the window:

gfx.webrender.all

If the preference value is set to true, it means the WebRender feature is already enabled in your Firefox browser.

If the preference value is set to false, it means the WebRender feature is disabled in your Firefox browser.

Enable_Disable_WebRender_Compositing_Mozilla_Firefox.png

3. If you want to forcefully enable WebRender feature in Firefox, double-click on gfx.webrender.all preference and set it to true.

If you want to disable WebRender feature in Firefox, double-click on gfx.webrender.all preference and set it to false.

Restart Firefox to apply changes.

[PS] Checking WebRender Status:

If you want to check whether WebRender feature is enabled or disabled or blocked in your Firefox browser, type about:support in address bar and press Enter. Now look for WEBRENDER and WEBRENDER_QUALIFIED parameters.

If you WEBRENDER as “opt-in by default: WebRender is an opt-in feature” and “available by user: Qualified enabled by pref”, it means WebRender is enabled in your Firefox browser. If you see WEBRENDER_QUALIFIED as “blocked by env: Unsupported vendor” or “blocked by env: No qualified hardware”, it means your operating system or graphics card (GPU) doesn’t support WebRender feature at the moment.

Also Check:

[Fix] Mozilla Firefox Keeps Crashing Constantly on Startup

Published in: Mozilla Firefox

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

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