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Known Limitations

What you may run into in Lightning today.

Some video does not play

Video and audio in the H.264, HEVC and AAC formats do not play. These formats are patented, and the Chromium build Lightning uses does not include them.

  • What works: YouTube and most large video sites, which also offer the open formats VP9, AV1 and Opus.
  • What does not: sites that offer only H.264 or AAC. Some, such as Bilibili, show a message that the browser is not supported rather than a broken player.

No extensions

Chrome Web Store extensions cannot be installed. The most common reason to install one, blocking ads and trackers, is built in.

The installer is unsigned

Windows may warn that the installer is from an unknown publisher, and the first start after installing can take several seconds longer than later ones while Windows inspects the new files.

Smaller gaps

  • Forms inside a frame from another site are not offered saved passwords.
  • A sleeping tab reloads its page when woken, so it returns to the top of the page. Tabs with typed text do not sleep, so nothing typed is lost.
  • Updates are manual. Install each new version yourself; the browser does not check for one.
  • Printing has no preview. Ctrl+P opens the system's print dialog, which prints but does not show the pages first. Save as PDF in the menu does show them, in a file.

Reporting a problem

Include what you did, what you expected, and the file lightning.log from %LOCALAPPDATA%\Methodox\Lightning. Each start also writes one line there saying how long each part of starting took, which helps with slow starts.