Chromium
Chromium is an open-source graphical web browser based on the Blink rendering engine. It is the basis for the proprietary Google Chrome browser.
Contents
- 1 Installation
- 2 Configuration
- 3 Tips and tricks
- 4 Troubleshooting
- 5 See also
Installation
The open-source project, Chromium, can be installed with the chromium package.
Other alternatives include:
- Chromium Dev Channel — the development version
- Chromium snapshot builds — the untested nightly version
- Chromium with VA-API support — see #Hardware video acceleration
The derived browser, Google Chrome, which automatically installs Flash Player and Widevine EME (for e.g. Netflix), can be installed with the google-chromeAUR package.
Other alternatives include:
- Google Chrome Beta Channel — the beta version
- Google Chrome Dev Channel — the development version
See these two articles for an explanation of the differences between Chromium and Chrome.
On top of the different Chromium build channels, a number of forks exist with more or less special features; see List of applications#Blink-based.
Configuration
Default applications
To set Chromium as the default browser and to change which applications Chromium launches when opening downloaded files, see default applications.
Flash Player plugin
Flash Player is automatically installed when using Google Chrome.
To install it for Chromium, install the pepper-flash package.
Make sure Flash is allowed to run in chrome://settings/content/flash
.
Widevine Content Decryption Module plugin
Widevine is Google's Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) Content Decryption Module (CDM). It is used to watch premium video content such as Netflix. It is automatically installed when using Google Chrome.
To install it for Chromium, install the chromium-widevineAUR package. Make sure Allow sites to play protected content is checked in chrome://settings/content/protectedContent
.
PDF viewer plugin
Chromium and Google Chrome are bundled with the Chromium PDF Viewer plugin. If you don't want to use this plugin, check Open PDFs using a different application in chrome://settings/content/pdfDocuments
.
Certificates
Chromium uses Network Security Services for certificate management. Certificates can be managed in chrome://settings/certificates
.
Hardware video acceleration
Accelerated video decoding via VA-API is available using chromium-vaapiAUR and can be enabled either by:
- enabling
chrome://flags/#enable-accelerated-video
andchrome://flags/#enable-accelerated-mjpeg-decode
flags; - specifying
--enable-accelerated-video
and--enable-accelerated-mjpeg-decode
on the command line or adding them to persistent configuration.
Additionally --disable-gpu-driver-bug-workarounds
has been tested and confirmed to remove video freezes (especially when watching in fullscreen).
Tips and tricks
See the main article: Chromium/Tips and tricks.
Troubleshooting
Fonts
Font rendering issues in PDF plugin
To fix the font rendering in some PDFs one has to install the ttf-liberation package, otherwise the substituted font causes text to run into other text. This was reported on the chromium bug tracker by an Arch user.
Font rendering issues of UTF characters
UTF characters may render as boxes (e.g. simplified Chinese characters). Installing ttf-liberation will allow for the characters to be rendered as expected.
Tab font size is too large
Chromium will use the GTK settings as described in GTK+#Configuration. When configured, Chromium will use the gtk-font-name
setting for tabs (which may mismatch window font size). To override these settings, use --force-device-scale-factor=1.0
.
Force GPU acceleration
chrome://gpu
for details.To force GPU acceleration, enable the flags: --ignore-gpu-blacklist
, --enable-gpu-rasterization
, --enable-zero-copy
in chrome://flags
or append to the persistent configuration. Additionally the flag --disable-gpu-driver-bug-workarounds
may need to be passed to prevent GPU workaround from being used. Flags in chrome://gpu
should state "Hardware accelerated" when configured and available.
For Native GpuMemoryBuffers the flag --enable-native-gpu-memory-buffers
needs to be pass or some optimizations (like the zero-copy rasterizer) will use software rendering. The flag isn't available under chrome://flags
and must be passed as a persistent flag or directly from the command line.
WebGL
There is the possibility that your graphics card has been blacklisted by Chromium. See #Force GPU acceleration.
If you are using Chromium with Bumblebee, WebGL might crash due to GPU sandboxing. In this case, you can disable GPU sandboxing with optirun chromium --disable-gpu-sandbox
.
Visit chrome://gpu/
for debugging information about WebGL support.
Chromium can save incorrect data about your GPU in your user profile (e.g. if you use switch between an Nvidia card using Optimus and Intel, it will show the Nvidia card in chrome://gpu
even when you're not using it or primusrun/optirun). Running using a different user directory, e.g, chromium --user-data-dir=$(mktemp -d)
may solve this issue. For a persistent solution you can reset the GPU information by deleting ~/.config/chromium/Local\ State
.
Zoomed-in GUI
Chromium's graphical interface will sometimes automatically scale for HiDPI displays. To disable this, use --force-device-scale-factor=1
.
Password prompt on every start with GNOME Keyring
See GNOME/Keyring#Passwords are not remembered.
Chromecasts in the network are not discovered
You will need to enable the Media Router Component Extension in chrome://flags/#load-media-router-component-extension
.
Losing cookies and passwords when switching between desktop environments
If you see the message Failed to decrypt token for service AccountId-*
in the terminal when you start Chromium, it might try to use the wrong password storage backend. This might happen when you switch between Desktop Environments.
See Chromium/Tips and tricks#Force a password store.
Hang on startup when Google Sync enabled
Try launching Chrome with --password-store=basic
or another appropriate password store.
See Chromium/Tips and tricks#Force a password store.