Chromium

Installation

NixOS

Add chromium to systemPackages.

Enable GPU accelerated video decoding (VA-API)

VA-API is enabled by default now in Chromium. Check chrome://gpu if it is working and if VA is detected. You may need to enable Hardware-accelerated video decode in chrome://flags.

Make sure the required VA-API drivers are installed: Accelerated Video Playback

Make sure your driver works by running: nix-shell -p libva-utils --run vainfo

Gnome Shell extensions

Gnome Shell extensions can be enabled with enableGnomeExtensions = true. It is a mozilla plugin, therefore it does not work currently with Chromium.

Enabling native Wayland support

Since Nixos 22.05 you can turn on native wayland support in all chrome and most electron apps by setting an environment variable: environment.sessionVariables.NIXOS_OZONE_WL = "1" (see notable changes)

In earlier versions you can enable wayland support by setting the appropriate command-line flags:

nixpkgs.config.chromium.commandLineArgs = "--enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland";

Overriding Chromium

Note: This section was never properly tested. Please update it accordingly if you notice issues with the examples and feel free to extend it.

To create a customized Chromium the following approach can be used:

chromium.mkDerivation (base: { name = "my-chromium"; gnFlags = { test_flag = 42; }; })

It should also be possible to override a Chromium attribute using

chromium.browser.overrideAttrs ...

.