Advanced Chromium configuration and tips

This note was created on 2023-02-14
This note was last edited on 2024-05-01

=== Hardware video acceleration ===
To enable hardware acceleration, you need to start the browser with the following flag: "--enable-features=VaapiVideoDecodeLinuxGL".

You can use the "~/.config/chromium-flags.conf" configuration file to make this flag persistent:
~~~
--enable-features=VaapiVideoDecodeLinuxGL
~~~
Note that this configuration file is ignored by Brave Browser. 

Instead, you can update its .desktop file "/usr/share/applications/brave-browser.desktop":
~~~
Exec=/usr/bin/brave-browser-stable --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecodeLinuxGL %U
~~~

=== Force Dark Theme ===
To force dark theme you need to use flag "--force-dark-mode".

To make it persistent, you can add it to .desktop file. For example, for Vivaldi: "/usr/share/applications/vivaldi-stable.desktop":
~~~
Exec=/usr/bin/vivaldi-stable --force-dark-mode %U
~~~