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WebGL Errors
Updated over a month ago

If PicMonkey has been running slowly, and/or you’ve received a message from us about slow performance, your issues may be related to WebGL, or Web Graphics Library.

PicMonkey is built using WebGL. If you are having issues with your internet browser or computer system and WebGL, please verify that you have the latest compatible browser update.

Support for WebGL is present in later versions of Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Microsoft Edge; however, the user's device must also have hardware that supports these features.

What is WebGL?

WebGL (Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript API for rendering high-performance interactive 3D and 2D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins (such as Flash). source

WebGL is the software the latest version of PicMonkey uses to render your images. WebGL may strain the available memory of some users with older graphics processing units (GPUs), resulting in slow performance, freezing, and crashing. This is a result of your machine running out of usable memory.

Test to see if WebGL is the problem

To find out if WebGL is causing the problem, open a browser window and head to http://get.webgl.org. If you DO NOT see a spinning cube, you will likely run into some performance issues.

There are two possible reasons why your browser may not support WebGL:

  1. Your current GPU is not powerful enough to run WebGL without some performance loss.

  2. Your current browser (Chrome is the most likely culprit) has blocked your graphics card to avoid possible crashes and freezing.

To test which issue you might be experiencing, we advise trying PicMonkey in newly updated/installed version of Firefox. If you can run PicMonkey without any noticeable slowness in Firefox, your issue is most likely one with Chrome blocking your graphics card.

If you need help resolving a WebGL error, please check out this article to see if you can address the issue first: Check the status and enable WebGL

Or, get in touch with our support team, and include the following information:

  • If you’re using Chrome: Please provide us with a GPU report by opening a window in Chrome and typing chrome://gpu into your address bar. Copy and paste the report into the help request form.

  • If you’re using Firefox: Please provide us a browser configuration report by opening a new tab and typing about:support into your address bar. Click the button that reads: "Copy text to clipboard."

  • If you’re using Safari: WebGL is enabled by default for Safari. If, for some reason, you are using Safari and do not see the spinning cube at http://get.webgl.org then contact support.

  • If you’re using Microsoft Edge: Please provide us with a GPU report by opening a window in Edge and typing edge://gpu into your address bar. Copy and paste the report into the help request form.

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