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servo
webrender
Rust2016–2025
servo / webrender

webrender

A GPU-based renderer for the web

29Distinct people
40Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
3.4KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A GPU-based renderer for the web

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

Yes! This is because web browsers use the platform text input stack Browsers are actually a great example of my favorite approach to cross-platform UI, because they sprinkle…

conradev used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 3:38:16 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year40 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2016-02-25 16:39:27 UTC to 2025-10-20 14:28:31 UTC.

0369122016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 0 submissions, 12 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 2 submissions, 5 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC12012
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC725
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
WebRender WebRender is a GPU-based 2D rendering engine written in Rust. Firefox, the research web browser Servo, and other GUI frameworks draw with it. It currently uses the OpenGL API internally. Note that the upstream home for this code is in gfx/wr folder of the mozilla-central repository at https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central. The GitHub repository at https://github.com/servo/webrender should be considered a downstream mirror, although it contains additional metadata (such as Github wiki pages) that do not exist in mozilla-central. Generally speaking, improvements to WebRender should be submitted upstream in Gecko, but those relevant to the Servo project or those unsuitable for upstream may be accepted here. If you are familiar with the mozilla-central contribution workflow, filing bugs in Bugzilla and submitting patches there would be preferred. Update as a Dependency After updating shaders in WebRender, go to servo and: Go to the servo directory and do ./mach update-cargo -p webrender Create a pull request to servo Use WebRender with Servo To use a local copy of WebRender with servo, go to your servo build directory and: Edit Cargo.toml Add at the end of the file: [patch."https://github.com/servo/webrender"] "webrender" = { path = "<path>/webrender" } "webrender_api" = { path = "<path>/webrender_api" } where <path> is the path to your local copy of WebRender. Build as normal Documentation The Wiki has a few pages describing the internals and conventions of WebRender. Testing Tests run using OSMesa to get consistent rendering across platforms. Still there may be differences depending on font libraries on your system, for example. See this gist for how to make the text tests useful in Fedora, for example.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

5 sources
Firefox integrates into some platforms better than others. There are some proposed changes to fix this, but they aren't quick fixes. >Write bindings to all relevant OS composition libraries. For Windows, we already have DirectComposition bindings, and for Linux, there are already bindings to Wayland. We need bindings for macOS Core Animation (which runs in the window server on relatively recent versions of macOS) and Android SurfaceFlinger. https://github.com/servo/webrender/issues/3115 On the Mac you can pick up performance improvements now by opting out of the OS's window scaling feature for the Firefox app. Get info for the Firefox app in the Finder and select the option to "Open in Low Resolution".
In Microsoft proves the critics right: We’re heading toward a Chrome-only Web

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