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Troubleshooting

This page lists common issues encountered when using Godot and possible solutions.

See also

See Using the Web editor for caveats specific to the Web version of the Godot editor.

The editor runs slowly and uses all my CPU and GPU resources, making my computer noisy

This is a known issue, especially on macOS since most Macs have Retina displays. Due to Retina displays' higher pixel density, everything has to be rendered at a higher resolution. This increases the load on the GPU and decreases perceived performance.

There are several ways to improve performance and battery life:

  • In 3D, click the Perspective button in the top left corner and enable Half Resolution. The 3D viewport will now be rendered at half resolution, which can be up to 4 times faster.

  • Open the Editor Settings and increase the value of Low Processor Mode Sleep (µsec) to 33000 (30 FPS). This value determines the amount of microseconds between frames to render. Higher values will make the editor feel less reactive but will help decrease CPU and GPU usage significantly.

  • If you have a node that causes the editor to redraw continuously (such as particles), hide it and show it using a script in the _ready() method. This way, it will be hidden in the editor but will still be visible in the running project.

The editor stutters and flickers on my variable refresh rate monitor (G-Sync/FreeSync)

This is a known issue. Variable refresh rate monitors need to adjust their gamma curves continuously to emit a consistent amount of light over time. This can cause flicker to appear in dark areas of the image when the refresh rate varies a lot, which occurs as the Godot editor only redraws when necessary.

There are several workarounds for this:

  • Enable Interface > Editor > Update Continuously in the Editor Settings. Keep in mind this will increase power usage and heat/noise emissions since the editor will now be rendering constantly, even if nothing has changed on screen. To alleviate this, you can increase Low Processor Mode Sleep (µsec) to 33000 (30 FPS) in the Editor Settings. This value determines the amount of microseconds between frames to render. Higher values will make the editor feel less reactive but will help decrease CPU and GPU usage significantly.

  • Alternatively, disable variable refresh rate on your monitor or in the graphics driver.

  • VRR flicker can be reduced on some displays using the VRR Control or Fine Tune Dark Areas options in your monitor's OSD. These options may increase input lag or result in crushed blacks.

  • If using an OLED display, use the Black (OLED) editor theme preset in the Editor Settings. This hides VRR flicker thanks to OLED's perfect black levels.

The editor or project takes a very long time to start

When using one of the Vulkan-based renderers (Forward+ or Forward Mobile), the first startup is expected to be relatively long. This is because shaders need to be compiled before they can be cached. Shaders also need to be cached again after updating Godot, after updating graphics drivers or after switching graphics cards.

If the issue persists after the first startup, this is a known bug on Windows when you have specific USB peripherals connected. In particular, Corsair's iCUE software seems to cause this bug. Try updating your USB peripherals' drivers to their latest version. If the bug persists, you need to disconnect the specific peripheral before opening the editor. You can then connect the peripheral again.

The Godot editor appears frozen after clicking the system console

When running Godot on Windows with the system console enabled, you can accidentally enable selection mode by clicking inside the command window. This Windows-specific behavior pauses the application to let you select text inside the system console. Godot cannot override this system-specific behavior.

To solve this, select the system console window and press Enter to leave selection mode.

Some text such as "NO DC" appears in the top-left corner of the Project Manager and editor window

This is caused by the NVIDIA graphics driver injecting an overlay to display information.

To disable this overlay on Windows, restore your graphics driver settings to the default values in the NVIDIA Control Panel.

To disable this overlay on Linux, open nvidia-settings, go to X Screen 0 > OpenGL Settings then uncheck Enable Graphics API Visual Indicator.

The project works when run from the editor, but fails to load some files when running from an exported copy

This is usually caused by forgetting to specify a filter for non-resource files in the Export dialog. By default, Godot will only include actual resources into the PCK file. Some files commonly used, such as JSON files, are not considered resources. For example, if you load test.json in the exported project, you need to specify *.json in the non-resource export filter. See Resource options for more information.

Also, note that files and folders whose names begin with a period will never be included in the exported project. This is done to prevent version control folders like .git from being included in the exported PCK file.

On Windows, this can also be due to case sensitivity issues. If you reference a resource in your script with a different case than on the filesystem, loading will fail once you export the project. This is because the virtual PCK filesystem is case-sensitive, while Windows's filesystem is case-insensitive by default.