A fix is coming to make the Pixel Slate less laggy

A fix has been in the works since November.

While the Pixel Slate is a welcome addition to Google's hardware lineup, there's one issue that holds it back from being as enjoyable to use as it should be — laggy performance when using it in tablet mode. Whether you're going through the multitasking menu or dragging two apps to be used side-by-side, these actions are met with an absurd amount of jank and laggy animations.

Thankfully, a fix is in the works for this.

As spotted by Chrome Unboxed, a bug report in the Chromium Gerrit from November 8 shows that Google's been aware of this issue and working on a fix for it. Per the report:

A lot of animation jank seems to be coming from the use of Mask Layers to create rounded corners. This combined with background blur adds a lot of additional steps in the paint/rendering pipeline.

The performance (fps increase) and memory improvement (tiles don't get discarded and we actually see the content) is quite significant on Nocturne Celeron when rounded corners are removed.

Google's given this bug a priority rating of 1, meaning it's one of the top concerns for the Chrome OS team right now.

It's unclear when exactly a fix will be ready, but here's to hoping it arrives sooner rather than later.

Google Pixel Slate review: Pro tablet, mediocre laptop