One of the limitations of Google Chrome’s Wayland support has been the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) not being supported for GPU-based video acceleration as it’s directly targeted the libva-x11 library. But with code merged on Friday to Chromium, libva-drm is now used to allow for working VA-API acceleration on X11 or Wayland.

The latest Chrome/Chromium browser code now allows for VA-API to work on the Linux Ozone/Wayland platform. The explicit VA-API X11 library use is now using the DRM library instead so that both Ozone’s X11 and Wayland platforms are using the same target. Chrome VA-API Wayland support MR

The Linux VA-API support at large for Google Chrome remains a “best effort” solution but in any event this change is a welcome move for enhancing the Google Chrome web browser with native Wayland support for this common video acceleration API.

See this merge for more information on Chrome’s forthcoming Wayland VA-API support.