Using GPU Hardware in Headless Chrome

Headless Chrome can utilize the local machine's GPU, at least in some circumstances. This capability is useful for Continuous Integration setups, running web workloads server-side, and in other scenarios.

With headless Chrome, pass the command line argument --enable-gpu to disable forcing software rendering. This defers to Chrome's default OpenGL driver autodetection, which on Linux requires that X display is available (i.e. X11 server is available and DISPLAY env var is set accordingly). While the default auto-detection doesn't seem to work without X11, forcing Vulkan backend (--use-angle=vulkan) have been found to work at least on some Linux configurations.

Linux NVIDIA users may find Server Side Headless Linux Chrome With GPUs helpful.

For additional background and information please see crbug.com/40540071, crbug.com/338414704, crbug.com/40256775, and crbug.com/40062624.