Wayland native mode: poor scrolling and rendering performance – Support | JetBrains

Problem

JetBrains IDEs running in native Wayland mode (WLToolkit) exhibit poor scrolling and rendering performance. Symptoms include jerky or laggy scrolling in the editor, slow UI repainting, and general unresponsiveness during navigation.

This affects all IntelliJ-based IDEs on Linux with a Wayland session. It is more noticeable on systems with integrated graphics (e.g., Intel Iris/UHD).

Starting with IDE version 2026.1, native Wayland mode is enabled by default on supported platforms.

Cause

The native Wayland rendering pipeline currently operates in software-only mode — all drawing is performed by the CPU. GPU-accelerated rendering via Vulkan is in active development (WLToolkit: Vulkan rendering pipeline).

Resolution

Open Help | Edit Custom VM Options and add the following options, then restart the IDE.

Enable Vulkan rendering and disable X11 pipelines

-Dsun.java2d.vulkan=true
-Dsun.java2d.opengl=false
-Dsun.java2d.xrender=false

This offloads rendering to the GPU and prevents the JVM from using X11-specific rendering paths that can interfere under native Wayland. Supported on modern Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA GPUs with Vulkan drivers installed.

Vulkan rendering is in ongoing development. Minor visual artifacts are possible.

Alternative: Switch to XWayland

If Vulkan is unavailable or causes issues, fall back to the X11 toolkit, which runs through XWayland compatibility:

-Dawt.toolkit.name=XToolkit

Conversely, on IDE versions before 2026.1 (where XWayland is the default), switching to native Wayland may improve scrolling:

-Dawt.toolkit.name=WLToolkit

See Linux: how to turn on/off native Wayland mode for details on toggling Wayland mode.

Additional steps

Disable smooth scrolling: Settings | Editor | General, uncheck Smooth scrolling
Disable Code Vision: Settings | Editor | Inlay Hints | Code Vision