ANGLE (software)

ANGLE (Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine) is an open source, cross-platform graphics engine abstraction layer developed by Google. ANGLE translates OpenGL ES 2/3 calls to Direct3D 9, 11, OpenGL, Vulkan or Metal API calls. It is a portable version of OpenGL but with limitations of OpenGL ES standard. The API is mainly designed to bring up a high-performance OpenGL compatibility to Microsoft Windows and to web browsers such as Chromium by translating OpenGL calls to Direct3D, which has much better driver support on Windows systems. On Windows, there are two backend renderers for ANGLE: the oldest one uses Direct3D 9.0c, while the newer one uses Direct3D 11. ANGLE is currently used by Google Chrome (embedded into the Blink browser engine), Firefox, Edge, Safari, and the Qt Framework. The engine is also used by Windows 10 for compatibility with apps ported from Android. Throughout 2019, the Apple team contributed a Metal API backend for ANGLE so Apple devices could run on their native graphics APIs. ANGLE is distributed under a BSD-license.