Blank screen or crash on Linux

Yaak is built on Tauri, which renders the interface with the system WebKitGTK webview. Some combinations of graphics drivers and display servers cause the window to appear blank or white, or crash the app on launch. This happens most often with Wayland and NVIDIA proprietary drivers.

Common error messages

Launching Yaak from a terminal may print one of the following before the crash:

Error 71 (Protocol error) dispatching to Wayland display

Cannot create EGL context: invalid display

Could not create default EGL display: EGL_BAD_PARAMETER. Aborting...

Fix with environment variables

Launch Yaak with one of the following environment variables. Try them in order:

WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 yaak

WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 disables the DMA-BUF renderer, which is the default in recent WebKitGTK versions. It is generally the right rendering path, but has been flaky with NVIDIA proprietary drivers (white or blank screens, flicker).

WEBKIT_DISABLE_COMPOSITING_MODE=1 yaak

WEBKIT_DISABLE_COMPOSITING_MODE=1 forces accelerated compositing off in WebKitGTK.

__NV_DISABLE_EXPLICIT_SYNC=1 yaak

__NV_DISABLE_EXPLICIT_SYNC=1 makes the NVIDIA driver and EGL-Wayland layer ignore the explicit sync path and fall back to older, less strict synchronization.

Applying the fix permanently

Once a variable works, apply it to every launch by adding it to /etc/environment:

WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1

Or copy the desktop entry and add the variable to its launch command:

cp /usr/share/applications/yaak.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
# Edit the Exec line:
# Exec=env WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 yaak

AppImage issues

Messages like Failed to load module "xapp-gtk3-module" are harmless and can be ignored.

If the AppImage crashes with an EGL error even with the environment variables above, try a distro-native package instead:

• Debian/Ubuntu: the .deb from the download page
• Arch: the official yaak package (pacman -S yaak)

Experimental CEF build (alpha)

If the fixes above don’t help, Yaak also offers a Linux build using the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) instead of WebKitGTK. It may help with WebKitGTK-specific rendering issues, but CEF support is alpha and may have bugs or missing functionality.

Find the yaak-cef assets on the GitHub releases page. Linux x64 and ARM64 builds are available as .deb packages and .tar.gz archives. Use these for testing, and mention that you’re using the CEF alpha when reporting an issue.

Still not working

Launch Yaak from a terminal and check the output, then check the application logs. Report what you find on the Linux graphics feedback post with your distro, GPU, and display server (X11 or Wayland).