Intent to ship: WebGPU on macOS Tahoe for ARM64
Jim Blandy
On behalf of Mozilla's WebGPU team, I intend to let WebGPU ride the trains to release in Firefox 145 on macOS Tahoe for ARM64. Older versions of macOS, Intel Macs, and other platforms will follow as soon as practical.
Tracking bug: webgpu-mvp-macos.
Availability: WebGPU has been enabled in Firefox Nightly on all platforms since April 2023, and was shipped to release on Windows in Firefox 141 without serious incident.
Specifications:
- Content API: https://www.w3.org/TR/webgpu/
- WebGPU Shading Language (WGSL): https://www.w3.org/TR/WGSL/
Working group: WebGPU is being standardized by the “GPU for the Web Working Group”, under the auspices of the W3C:
- GPU for the Web Working Group: https://www.w3.org/2020/gpu/
- GPU for the Web Community Group: https://www.w3.org/community/gpu/
Platform coverage: Firefox should eventually support WebGPU on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. Apple shipped WebGPU in Safari 26 on macOS and iOS.
Although the committee has taken care to ensure that WebGPU can be implemented for a wide majority of systems, there are some GPUs and drivers that are not capable enough to run WebGPU. Like WebGL, when a browser cannot find any suitable GPUs, a WebGPU implementation may decline to offer any “adapters” for content to use. GPU-less software implementations might be added in the future.
Standards Compliance: Firefox's compliance with the WebGPU specification has improved to the point that most apps and samples work without modification, and we believe it will work well for most content. We are actively addressing the remaining compatibility issues as identified by the Web Platform Tests (see below) and various applications of interest.
Developer tools: At the moment, there is no Devtools support for WebGPU, nor are there any concrete plans for such.
Other browsers:
- Chromium/Chrome/Edge: shipped in 2023H1
- Safari: shipped in Safari 26
Web Platform Tests (WPT): WebGPU has an extensive Conformance Test Suite, which is run in Firefox CI. Treeherder displays it under the "webgpu" chip.
W3C TAG review: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/626
Demos:
Reporting bugs: Please file bugs against the “Graphics: WebGPU” component of the “Core” product.