// OMG! UBUNTU! — LINUX & OPEN SOURCE
Firefox is adding Vulkan video decoding for Nvidia GPUs
Firefox is adding hardware-accelerated Vulkan Video decoding, saving Nvidia users on Linux the hassle of manually configuring the nvidia-vaapi-driver package.
The change will be included in Firefox 153, out July 21, but it will not be enabled by default – not to start with.
Instead, users will be able to flip a pair of preferences in about:config to try it out, with the awareness that there may be hiccups and edge cases (especially on devices with hybrid graphics, mentioned further down).
Given that Nvidia GPUs are capable (understatement klaxon), I was surprised to hear that this didn’t already work. Turns out, Firefox’s disables hardware video decoding for all Nvidia devices on Linux – blanket-style – which is why a community workaround was necessary.
Adding native Vulkan Video decoding path to its codebase means workarounds will no longer be required.
Vulkan Video is a cross-vendor spec, not an Nvidia-specific one. Firefox’s implementation builds on FFmpeg’s Vulkan decode support.
Arm and embedded GPUs were the initial target of this work, resolving a bug about a lack of hardware video decode on Aarch64 Linux at all.
Nvidia’s own DGX Spark, an Arm-based desktop AI computer that runs Ubuntu, currently lacks hardware video decoding in Firefox as the GB10 chip doesn’t support VA-API or V4L2. Mozilla’s tracking bug for fixing that depends on this Vulkan Video work.
There’s no compatibility list you can check as Firefox tests your GPU’s Vulkan support the first time you enable it, so the only way to know if it works is to try it.
You’ll need to be running Nvidia driver version 595.x or later and Firefox 153 beta (or nightly).