GPU: getPreferredCanvasFormat() method

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.

Secure context: This feature is available only in secure contexts (HTTPS), in some or all supporting browsers.

Note: This feature is available in Web Workers.

The getPreferredCanvasFormat() method of the GPU interface returns the optimal canvas texture format for displaying 8-bit depth, standard dynamic range content on the current system.

This is commonly used to provide a GPUCanvasContext.configure() call with the optimal format value for the current system. This is recommended — if you don't use the preferred format when configuring the canvas context, you may incur additional overhead, such as additional texture copies, depending on the platform.

Syntax

js
getPreferredCanvasFormat()

Parameters

None.

Return value

A string indicating a canvas texture format. The value can be rgba8unorm or bgra8unorm.

Exceptions

None.

Examples

js
const canvas = document.querySelector("#gpuCanvas");
const context = canvas.getContext("webgpu");

context.configure({
  device: device,
  format: navigator.gpu.getPreferredCanvasFormat(),
  alphaMode: "premultiplied",
});

Specifications

Specification
WebGPU
# dom-gpu-getpreferredcanvasformat

Browser compatibility

Report problems with this compatibility data on GitHub
desktopmobileserver
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
Deno
getPreferredCanvasFormat
Experimental

Legend

Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.

Full support
Full support
Partial support
Partial support
In development. Supported in a pre-release version.
In development. Supported in a pre-release version.
No support
No support
Experimental. Expect behavior to change in the future.
See implementation notes.

See also