Browser video playback stutter with Wayland 25.04, do I upgrade?

Ubuntu Version:
25.04

So I’m looking to upgrade from 25.04 to 25.10 but i’m worrying about a problem with video playback (e.g. YouTube) stuttering with poor FPS in the internet browsers. In the end I’ve had to use Xorg which immediately fixed the problem.

Hardware acceleration has been enabled, effects Brave, Opera and Firefox. I tried some settings recommended at the time and nothing helped. Concerned because Xorg is now no longer supported or given as a option going forward?

Has the issue been address, or potentially resolved on its own?

Cheers, James

You have to upgrade anyway since support for 25.04 ends in January iirc. Beside that some more information is needed: Laptop/PC, System specs (CPU, RAM, GPU). Are you using main Ubuntu with Gnome or another DE or official flavor?

I’ve been using wayland for i don’t know how long and never had a issue with playing video playback.

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Sorry! Gnome 48, standard, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080, Intel® Core™ i5-6500 × 4, Linux 6.14.0-36-generic.

Nvidia-driver-580 (proprietary tested).

I had it from day one of a fresh install - I will go for the upgrade in which case as support is ending and hope for the best.

nVidia and Wayland are known to have some issues. I don’t use nVidia, so maybe someone else may be able to provide further support.

So I’ve upgraded to 25.10, and what I feared has come about - the browsers does not like video playback. I’ve tried enabling and disabling “hardware acceleration” in the settings to no avail.

Its not actually when its playing that causing the lag - if the video is paused and I scroll with it even partly on screen theirs lag/stuttering. As soon as its out of sight then the browser appears more normal. I would say however the overall browser performance isn’t as smooth.

Any suggestions?

Quick update - by random luck on YouTube I turned of ambient mode that’s improved it, atleast for that website. But its definitely a performance thing - it feels slow and the playback on higher quality starts to struggle.

So even with the setting enabled still software.

brave://gpu/
Graphics Feature Status

  • Canvas: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable
  • Direct Rendering Display Compositor: Disabled
  • Compositing: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled
  • Multiple Raster Threads: Enabled
  • OpenGL: Disabled
  • Rasterization: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled
  • Raw Draw: Disabled
  • Skia Graphite: Disabled
  • TreesInViz: Disabled
  • Video Decode: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled
  • Video Encode: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled
  • Vulkan: Disabled
  • WebGL: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable
  • WebGPU: Disabled
  • WebNN: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable

Figured it out, thanks to Snap.

If I install it via apt work fine, so presumably Snap cannot access VAAPI - same as Kodi, really defeats the object of ubuntu pushing snap, no idea if similar behaviour in flatpack :

Graphics Feature Status

  • Canvas: Hardware accelerated
  • Direct Rendering Display Compositor: Disabled
  • Compositing: Hardware accelerated
  • Multiple Raster Threads: Enabled
  • OpenGL: Enabled
  • Rasterization: Hardware accelerated
  • Raw Draw: Disabled
  • Skia Graphite: Disabled
  • TreesInViz: Disabled
  • Video Decode: Hardware accelerated
  • Video Encode: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled
  • Vulkan: Disabled
  • WebGL: Hardware accelerated
  • WebGPU: Disabled
  • WebNN: Disabled
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This was fixed for all snaps using the core24 base, most of the browsers are still using core22 though (you can find the base with snap info --verbose <package name>)

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