Browser video "freezes" in transparent background when Terminal maximized

[nc7s]

Windows Terminal version

1.23.12811.0

Windows build number

10.0.19045.0

Other Software

Firefox 145.0
Chromium 141.0.7390.108

Steps to reproduce

1. Play a video in the browser
2. Switch to Terminal and maximize, so the browser is under it
3. Play a local video with a local player like VLC
4. Switch to Terminal and maximize, so the player is under it

Expected Behavior

Both videos should continue playing.

Actual Behavior

The video in browser "freezes" (in Firefox the frame stays, in Chromium the player goes black) under Terminal, while the video in local player plays normally.

[Aditya-maharshi]

The most likely culprit is the interaction between browser hardware acceleration and the acrylic transparency effect.

Disable Transparency: The easiest temporary fix would be to turn off the "Acrylic" background effect in your Windows Terminal settings. If the window isn't transparent, the bug likely won't occur.

Don't Maximize: Try just resizing the Terminal window to be almost maximized instead of using the maximize button. This sometimes bypasses bugs related to window states.

[DHowett]

Thanks for the report! Most modern browsers these days use "occlusion tracking". When another window is fully covering the browser window, they just stop rendering. It saves power and CPU time. The common implementations do not handle partially-transparent windows being placed over top of the browser.

You will need to find the specific configuration flags for your browser to disable this feature.

[nc7s]

Thanks for the introduction and TIL ;)

For future reference, Firefox has the widget.windows.window_occlusion_tracking.enabled option in about:config. Chromium seems to no longer have an adjustable option right in the browser, there is a SE question about it: https://superuser.com/questions/1787650/how-to-record-web-browsers-when-their-window-is-not-in-focus

For now it seems enough to adjust the terminal window so it's a few pixels short on one side, which is kinda ugly but It Works ™

[Cierra-Runis]

I'm curious why a transparent VSCode doesn't show this behavior (or bug). I'm using Custom UI Style
to make VSCode transparent.

QQ20260207-033718.mp4

If the Terminal adopted the same implementation, this issue might be resolved.