element-desktop: Element not Rendering Graphics

Steps to reproduce

Where are you starting? What can you see? Open Element as per standard on a GNOME desktop, but the window proceeds to flash & goes on to not render anything but a text cursor at the bottom of it. Even the topbar icon is caught up in this, as it briefly renders on launching the program & then visually disappears (while still being clickable).
No more steps, just doesn’t work lol.

Outcome

What did you expect?

For Element to render correctly.

What happened instead?

On opening, the window proceeds to flash & go on to not render anything but a text cursor at the bottom of it. Screenshot from 2023-06-21 22-46-44

Operating system

Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) OS w/ GNOME 42.5 DE on Wayland window server

Application version

Can’t see, but latest

How did you install the app?

https://packages.element.io/debian/ i.e. the first-party Deb repo for Element, via apt

Homeserver

No response

Will you send logs?

Yes

About this issue

Original URL
State: open
Created a year ago
Comments: 26 (1 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

On nixos i modify the desktop entry with an override:

  nixpkgs.config.packageOverrides = pkgs: {
    element-desktop = pkgs.element-desktop.overrideAttrs (old: {
      desktopItem = old.desktopItem.override (old: {
        exec = "element-desktop --disable-gpu --in-process-gpu %u";
      });
    });
  };

pbsds on Jul 12, 2023

try running with --disable-gpu --in-process-gpu

pbsds on Jun 29, 2023

Same here. Yesterday’s update from https://packages.element.io/debian caused the white window again, removal of GPUCache/* fixed it again.

Maybe Element should empty that directory on startup or after an update as a temporary solution until the real reason is found and fixed?

Taranchul on Jul 29, 2023

I found a solution in another issue that fixed the white screen for me: Delete the contents of ~/.config/Element/GPUCache (or ~/.config/Riot/GPUCache if you upgraded to Element from Riot).

edit: Ah, I just saw that this is also mentioned in joepie91’s link to nixpkgs.

Worked for me aswell.

sascha-wi on Jul 24, 2023

I found a solution in another issue that fixed the white screen for me: Delete the contents of ~/.config/Element/GPUCache (or ~/.config/Riot/GPUCache if you upgraded to Element from Riot).

edit: Ah, I just saw that this is also mentioned in joepie91’s link to nixpkgs.

Taranchul on Jul 22, 2023

I can confirm getting the same issue in the last update (flag --disable-gpu --in-process-gpu temporarily solves it, but it’s a pain having to maintain a terminal opened). Hope it’s solved soon. I have Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS with AMD Ryzen 7 Graphics (Renoir).

You can use the following alias which won’t hang your terminal (it works with bash). alias element-desktop-gpu="element-desktop --disable-gpu --in-process-gpu &> /dev/null &"

ailequal on Jul 11, 2023

FTR, this is not an issue on nixos 23.11: no workaround needed and i get hardware acceleration finally.

This can maybe be closed

Just because you have no issues on your OS doesn’t mean the issue can be closed.

sascha-wi on Jan 12, 2024

Was using Element last night without issue, this morning Element started showing this issue, additionally chrome wasn’t rendering correctly. Reinstalling chrome would fix the problem with chrome but as soon as I opened element up it would return. removing the contents of ~/.config/Element/GPUCache as recommend above seems to have fixed both the issue with element and it’s strange interaction with my browser.

NOFUNEVER on Jul 28, 2023

I can confirm getting the same issue in the last update (flag --disable-gpu --in-process-gpu temporarily solves it, but it’s a pain having to maintain a terminal opened). Hope it’s solved soon. I have Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS with AMD Ryzen 7 Graphics (Renoir). Selection_1506

MiquelRForgeFlow on Jul 11, 2023

So uhh did anyone file an Electron/chromium issue for that?

fogti on Jul 8, 2023

–disable-gpu --in-process-gpu

this helped me with my issue, but why is this neccessary now? It worked fine before. I am on debian testing.

sascha-wi on Jul 5, 2023