Postman will no longer load as of 6.1.2 (GPU issue)

[JaggedJax]

This is on Windows 8.1 Pro. After updating to Postman 6.1.2 the standalone Windows app will no longer launch fully. I have tried to uninstall and re-install and the same issue persists.

The application window opens but the main content never loads. The File menu does start working after about 15 seconds, but selecting anything that affects the UI in the window or opens a new Postman window just leaves the window blank. Included are a series of screenshots showing how the UI is loading. I have been unable to find any log files so far, and the Postman Console will not load at all.

Screenshots
When first launched, the splash screen appears but it just blank:

Next the main window loads as plain white with nothing else displayed. This lasts for about 15-30 seconds:

Next the main window background beige color loads and the menu bar loads and works:

The application will stay like this forever. Sometimes the UI will turn solid black. Also the Windows cursor pops up the loading icon about 4 times a second whenever hovering over the Postman UI. There are a bunch of Postman threads running, none of them are pegging the CPU, but they are all active and reach up to around 15% at times on my quad physical core PC.

Here's what happens when I try opening the Postman Console:

App information (please complete the following information):

• App Type: Native Windows App
• Postman Version: 6.2.1
• OS: Windows 8.1 x64

[harryi3t]

UPDATE: v.6.1.3 has been released which addresses this issue. Download it from https://www.getpostman.com/apps and follow the steps below instead of using the canary build.

@JaggedJax We are tracking a known issue where Postman doesn’t launch with certain GPUs - we are investigating this at the moment and exploring possible fixes. In the meantime, please use the disable-gpu flag to continue using Postman. Please note that there is a possibility of performance degradation while this flag is set.

We have already added a workaround for this is the latest canary (https://www.getpostman.com/canary)
For it to work you will have to add an environment variable POSTMAN_DISABLE_GPU=true
We are in the process of adding documentation for this, for the time being you can follow these steps:

1. Open advanced system settings

2. In the Advanced tab click Environment Variables

3. Add a new variable

4. Logout and Login back or Restart your PC

[JaggedJax]

This is working with that workaround. Additionally I saw that the latest on the website is now 6.0.10 and I can confirm that version works without the --disable-gpu flag as well.

If it's useful my GPU is an Intel HD Graphics 4000. The driver for it is super old (from October 21, 2013)

[harryi3t]

This workaround is available in latest version of Postman 6.1.3
@JaggedJax Thanks for the confirmation of the fix 👍

[JaggedJax]

I can confirm that the environmental variable is working in 6.1.3

[RandomDude777]

Can also confirm this fix is valid (win 8,1 sp1, postman 6.1.3)

[MG-CDS]

The work-around proposed by @harryi3t worked for me. I installed v6.1.3, added the suggested Environment Variable, and rebooted. Postman is now performing as expected.

Thank you @harryi3t ! :)

[harishrajora]

There is another going around that I did. You must be having NVIDIA or AMD processor. Maybe anything else. Go to the postman.exe location (which is in Users//App Data/local/postman/app/postman.exe

Right-click on it and run with intel HD graphics. It will run fine as before.

[aman-singh-parihar]

The work-around proposed by @harryi3t worked for me.
Thanks @harryi3t

[atom0s]

Windows 8.1 Pro as well, desktop with a single GeForce GTX 970. This, to me, looks more like a Windows 8.1 issue than a problem with the graphics card. (I do not have a second card or integrated graphics for this to fall back on but the environment variable did work for me as well.)

[TheFrogPrince]

=o/ The environment variable works as a workaround. The whole episode gets my vote for "Fail of the quarter", though. You don't know much time I've wasted (including harassing McAfee administrators) before finding my way here. Is it really necessary to try to squeeze out more performance by sitting directly on top of graphics cards? (Windows 2012 R2 with dual AMD Radeon HD8490 cards).

[eugen-nw]

Neither the env. var, nor the "C:\Users\eugen\AppData\Local\Postman\app-6.1.3\Postman.exe --disable-gpu" command line parameter works for me. I'm on Windows 10, using 6.1.3. I see that I have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 video adapter.

The app starts up, displays its collections and after a short while its screen turns completely black. Right click-ing Postman.exe in Windows Explorer does not give me the option to run with Intel HD graphics

[eugenerr]

With or without POSTMAN_DISABLE_GPU variable set I couldn't start installers PostmanCanary-win64-7.1.1-canary07-Setup.exe or Postman-win64-7.1.1-Setup.exe using options Run -> Integrated Graphics or Run -> High Performance NVIDIA processor on Win 10 Lenovo T480 laptop.
Integrated Graphics is Intel UHD Graphics 620 and NVIDIA card is GeForce MX150.

PostmanCanary-win64-7.1.1-custom-Setup.exe has installed application and I can confirm that application itself starts as designed.
When are you planning to make installer without 1 month limit available?

[ankurdengla]

@eugen-nw The fix for this issue is now available in the latest Canary app - Postman Canary 7.3.0-canary01.
This build does not have the 1 month limit.

[eugenerr]

Hi @ankurdengla1996 thank you, downloaded v7.3.0-canary03, no problem installing!

[harryi3t]

@juan-ramirez @bmercernccer @TurtleBeach @eugenerr
Thank you for verifying the fix on the custom build. We had released Postman 7.3.x with this fix to some of our users. During this partial rollout, we found a bug around TLS renegotiation.
We have posted the detailed analysis here: #6886 (comment)

We are looking into downgrading an internal dependency (Electron) to fix the TLS bug. We just wanted to make sure that because of this downgrade, the GPU issue should not get regressed.

We need your help once again to verify this.
The fix is available in on our canary channel (7.3.4-canary01). You can download it from https://www.getpostman.com/downloads/canary

Thank you

[numaanashraf]

Thanks for your patience everyone. Postman v7.3.x includes an internal change that we believe should prevent this issue from happening to a large extent. I’ve included a detailed description below explaining why this happened and the further steps we are taking to minimize these issues going forward.

Why was this happening?
Postman’s Desktop Apps are built on top of Electron, an open-source desktop application framework which is also used by apps like Slack, VSCode, Skype, etc. Electron includes a packaged version of Chrome, which is instrumental in drawing the final GUI that we show inside a Postman window.

Chrome prefers using the on-device GPU as much as possible to perform accelerated rendering to draw the UI - but not all GPU hardware + driver version combinations work well with GPU acceleration. Chrome mitigates this issue to a certain degree by maintaining an empirically derived whitelist to turn off GPU acceleration for known combinations and these are kept updated in newer versions of Chrome.

Postman versions v6.1.x through 7.2.x used a version of Electron that internally used Chrome v59 (which did not include the latest version of this whitelist) and in Postman v7.3, we have updated the Electron version we use and we now ship with Chrome v66, which includes an updated version of the whitelist. This update took longer than we initially expected as we needed to make sure that this new version of Electron was stable enough for our entire user base.

Next steps
Due to the large number of GPU hardware + driver combinations out there, there might still be some devices where Postman might not render correctly. To support these devices, we are working on a way to detect these problems while Postman runs (through deeper integration with Electron & Chrome), inform our users and possibly disable GPU acceleration automatically.

In the interim, the recommended workaround in this thread will continue to work and we advise anyone still facing this issue to use this workaround (https://learning.getpostman.com/docs/postman/launching_postman/installation_and_updates/#troubleshooting-postman-updates) and help us stay on top of this issue by sharing your GPU & driver information here.

References:
GPU whitelist in Postman v6.1 - v7.2: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/tags/59.0.3071.115/gpu/config/software_rendering_list.json
GPU whitelist in Postman v7.3+ : https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/tags/66.0.3359.181/gpu/config/software_rendering_list.json

[Redsandro]

Chrome v66 means Electron 3 which has a critical bug that on certain hardware freezes the entire computer, making you lose all your work. The bug has been fixed in Electron 4 and up, but not Electron 3 because Electron 3 is no longer supported.

[RyanHCCSI]

adding the POSTMAN_DISABLE_GPU=true environment variable resolved the Postman startup issue for me.

My equipment is a Lenovo P52s running Windows 10 w/ 2 display adapters: Intel UHD Graphics 620 and NVIDIA Quadro P500.

[Redsandro]

POSTMAN_DISABLE_GPU=true

Where are these flags documented?

[haydenhancock]

Adding the POSTMAN_DISABLE_GPU=true did not work for me.

OS

• OS Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
• Version 10.0.18362 Build 18362
• Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5820K CPU @3.30GHz
• 64 GB RAM

GPU

• GeForce GTX 980 Ti
• Driver version 441.66

Postman

• Version 7.14

[olistic]

Due to the large number of GPU hardware + driver combinations out there, there might still be some devices where Postman might not render correctly. To support these devices, we are working on a way to detect these problems while Postman runs (through deeper integration with Electron & Chrome), inform our users and possibly disable GPU acceleration automatically.

Hey @numaanashraf! Did you end up finding an automated solution for this?

[eugen-nw]

It îs pitiful, I need to open dev. view right after I start Postman and hit F5 when the exception occurs if I do not want a black screen.

[Dani21]

I ran into a similar issue, and none of the solutions in this thread worked. It also wouldn't close unless I killed the task, though choosing to enable/disable Harware Acceleration would restart it. I ended up using PowerShell instead.

Windows 10 Enterprise, Dell Latitude 5520
11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1185G7, Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics

[numaanashraf]

@Dani21 Looks like you are impacted by #10763. Could you download the latest version of Postman from postman.com/downloads and see whether the issue is resolved for you?

[Dani21]

@Dani21 Looks like you are impacted by #10763. Could you download the latest version of Postman from postman.com/downloads and see whether the issue is resolved for you?

Thanks, that was it!

[henryobiaraije]

I just updated to version 9.13.3 and started noticing this pixelation effect.

However, setting the environmental variable POSTMAN_DISABLE_GPU=true does solve the problem for me.

[ibahas]

I ran into a similar issue, and none of the solutions in this thread worked. It also wouldn't close unless I killed the task, though choosing to enable/disable Harware Acceleration would restart it. I ended up using PowerShell instead.

Windows 10 Enterprise, Dell Latitude 5520 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1185G7, Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics

Same Error 😥

[walidbosso]

Using Windows8.1, This works like charm, thanks @harryi3t