diff --git a/docs/features/ui.md b/docs/features/ui.md
index 6a49689a..182620f3 100644
--- a/docs/features/ui.md
+++ b/docs/features/ui.md
@@ -166,7 +166,7 @@ The line being sung takes a colour of the user's choosing in the immersive lyric
 
 Entry points in the [`PlayerBar`](../../src/components/player/PlayerBar.tsx): clicking the cover (mirrors Spotify) or the Immersive button, plus the Maximize2 icon in the side `LyricsPanel` header. `PlayerContext` exposes `immersiveOpen` + `immersiveInitialTab` + `openImmersive`/`closeImmersive`; the old `openFullscreenNowPlaying`/`openFullscreenLyrics`/`close*` names stay as back-compat aliases that all drive the one merged view.
 
-**Transition hygiene** — the view paints a solid `bg-zinc-950` on the outer wrapper from the first frame; the `animate-fade-in` keyframe lives on the inner backdrop + foreground layers, not the wrapper. Without that opaque base the wrapper's own opacity ramp (0 → 1 over 300 ms) would let the page underneath bleed through during the transition.
+**Transition hygiene** — the view paints a solid `bg-zinc-950` on the outer wrapper from the first frame; the `animate-fade-in` keyframe lives on the inner backdrop + foreground layers, not the wrapper. Without that opaque base the wrapper's own opacity ramp (0 → 1 over 300 ms) would let the page underneath bleed through during the transition. **Linux opens without the fade.** WebKitGTK 2.54 rebuilds its layers each time a video appears inside a full-window layer that is still animating, and a motion cover mounting during the fade blacked the window out three times. Without the fade one short flash is left, WebKit creating the video layer; neither the backdrop blur nor the clip's own 700 ms fade played a part, each ruled out on its own. The AppImage's older WebKit never flashed.
 
 **Skin neutrality** — the immersive view carries `role="dialog"` + a `shadow-2xl` cover, which the skins' modal / surface / text-colour chrome would otherwise capture (Liquid-light + Editorial repainted it as a light glass slab with dark, invisible text + washed-out controls; Lounge / Pulse flattened the cover backdrop). The root is tagged `data-immersive` + a nested `dark` context (so the shared `PlaybackControls` / `VolumeControl` / `ProgressBar` render their dark-theme variants over the always-dark backdrop), and every skin's relevant rules carry `:not([data-immersive]):not([data-immersive] *)` so the view renders identically across skins.
 
@@ -184,7 +184,7 @@ Entry points in the [`PlayerBar`](../../src/components/player/PlayerBar.tsx): cl
 
 **Playing a local clip on Linux.** WebKitGTK plays `<video>` through GStreamer, and none of the obvious ways to hand it a local file works for every clip, which is why Canvas clips and motion covers never played on Linux before 1.8.0. The asset protocol has no GStreamer source ("Requested protocol: asset (allowed: no)"; allowing it with `WEBKIT_GST_ALLOWED_URI_PROTOCOLS` only moves the failure to "no URI handler implemented for asset"). A `blob:` URL corrupts a **fragmented** MP4 (`moof`/`mdat` pairs, which is what Apple's motion covers are) and errors on a 20 MB ordinary one, and MediaSource never finishes appending one. Over HTTP an ordinary MP4 plays, but a fragmented one stops after about two seconds for good: WebKit suspends the download once its queue fills and never resumes it — measured against a local server and against Apple's CDN alike, so it is not the server, and the system WebKit of a native package does no better. So [`usePlayableVideo`](../../src/hooks/usePlayableVideo.ts), shared by `CanvasStage` and [`MotionCoverOverlay`](../../src/components/player/MotionCoverOverlay.tsx), streams every local clip from [`media_loopback`](../../src-tauri/crates/app/src/media_loopback.rs), an HTTP server on `127.0.0.1` started on first use, with an ephemeral port and a token minted per launch, answering `Range` requests for video files the asset scope already allows and nothing else. Its path must be absolute with no `..` component, since the scope patterns match text; beyond that the check is the asset protocol's own. The first time the server is asked for a fragmented file, it converts it to an ordinary MP4 ([`mp4_defrag`](../../src-tauri/crates/core/src/artwork/mp4_defrag.rs): every frame copied as is, one index up front, the timeline moved to zero — Apple's covers start ten seconds into their own), which takes a few tens of milliseconds. A file under WaveFlow's own data or cache directories is rewritten in place; anything else, such as a clip in the user's music folder, is never touched, and the converted copy goes to `linux_video/` under the cache root (512 MB, oldest evicted first) to be served instead. An uncached motion cover would reach the webview as a remote URL and stall, so on Linux [`fetch_album_motion_artwork`](../../src-tauri/crates/app/src/commands/motion_artwork.rs) downloads it whatever the cache setting says: with the cache off, into a 256 MB LRU of its own (`motion_cache/linux-playback/`) that the Settings tally leaves out and "Clear cache" empties. Remote URLs, and every URL on Windows and macOS, are used as they are.
 
-Two WebKitGTK limits remain. The first pass of a long clip still jumps back to its start after two or three seconds, WebKit reloading what it stopped downloading; after that it loops. And a looping `<video>` goes blank while it seeks back to its start, which lets the static cover flash through, so [`useLoopFrameHold`](../../src/hooks/usePlayableVideo.ts) copies the current frame into a `<canvas>` under the video at each `timeupdate` and shows it during that seek — at each update rather than near the reported end, because WebKit can loop well before the `duration` it reports. Neither runs on Windows or macOS. The AppImage additionally needs its own GStreamer plugins — see [RELEASING.md](../RELEASING.md#the-appimage-carries-its-own-gstreamer).
+Two WebKitGTK limits remain. The first pass of a long clip still jumps back to its start after two or three seconds, WebKit reloading what it stopped downloading; after that it loops. And a looping `<video>` goes blank while it seeks back to its start, which lets the static cover flash through, so [`useLoopFrameHold`](../../src/hooks/usePlayableVideo.ts) copies the current frame into a `<canvas>` under the video at each `timeupdate` and shows it during that seek — at each update rather than near the reported end, because WebKit can loop well before the `duration` it reports. That copy needs frames the page can read back, and WebKitGTK's DMA-BUF video sink hands out GL textures it cannot map (`Cannot map External OES textures`, four times a second, on Fedora's WebKitGTK 2.54, where the held frame stayed empty), so [`render_mode::apply`](../../src-tauri/crates/app/src/render_mode.rs) sets `WEBKIT_GST_DMABUF_SINK_DISABLED=1` on Linux in every mode unless the user set it. The GL sink WebKit falls back to keeps the compositor's DMA-BUF path; measured on an Iris Xe, nothing slowed down, unlike `WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER`, which made the whole view lag and stretched the clip. Neither limit applies on Windows or macOS. The AppImage additionally needs its own GStreamer plugins — see [RELEASING.md](../RELEASING.md#the-appimage-carries-its-own-gstreamer).
 
 **"Show Canvas" toggle** — a [`CanvasToggleButton`](../../src/components/player/CanvasToggleButton.tsx) (Spotify's control) appears in the immersive top bar, the `NowPlayingPanel` header **and** the [mini-player](#mini-player)'s top bar **only when the current track has a Canvas** and motion isn't reduced, so it is never a dead control. It drives the global [`useCanvasEnabled`](../../src/hooks/useCanvasEnabled.ts) preference (localStorage, **default OFF** — the cover shows first, the clip takes over on click, matching "click Show Canvas to reveal"). `prefers-reduced-motion` ([`usePrefersReducedMotion`](../../src/hooks/usePrefersReducedMotion.ts)) suppresses the clip and hides the toggle; radio (negative sentinel id) and Spotify tracks are excluded. Setting a Canvas is immersive-only in v1 (the panel only reflects + toggles).
 
diff --git a/src-tauri/crates/app/src/render_mode.rs b/src-tauri/crates/app/src/render_mode.rs
index 03c063d2..a6301669 100644
--- a/src-tauri/crates/app/src/render_mode.rs
+++ b/src-tauri/crates/app/src/render_mode.rs
@@ -594,6 +594,16 @@ fn set_unless_present(key: &str, value: &str) {
 
 /// Turn the decision into the environment the web engine will read.
 fn apply(mode: RenderMode) {
+    // Every mode, GPU included: WebKitGTK's DMA-BUF video sink hands the
+    // page frames as GL textures it cannot map back. Copying one into a
+    // `<canvas>`, which `useLoopFrameHold` does four times a second to
+    // hide a looping clip's jump back, then fails with `Cannot map
+    // External OES textures`, and the held frame stays empty. The GL sink
+    // WebKit uses instead keeps the compositor's own DMA-BUF path, so
+    // nothing slows down: `WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER`, which software
+    // mode sets below, is the switch that costs.
+    #[cfg(target_os = "linux")]
+    set_unless_present("WEBKIT_GST_DMABUF_SINK_DISABLED", "1");
     if mode == RenderMode::Gpu {
         return;
     }
diff --git a/src/components/player/ImmersiveView.tsx b/src/components/player/ImmersiveView.tsx
index 8bf1d887..6441e72e 100644
--- a/src/components/player/ImmersiveView.tsx
+++ b/src/components/player/ImmersiveView.tsx
@@ -20,12 +20,22 @@ import { ImmersiveLyricsColumn } from "./ImmersiveLyricsColumn";
 import { ImmersiveShareButton } from "./ImmersiveShareButton";
 import { CanvasToggleButton } from "./CanvasToggleButton";
 import { CanvasPickerModal } from "../common/CanvasPickerModal";
+import { LINUX } from "../../hooks/usePlayableVideo";
 
 /** Below this width the dual-column layout collapses to a single column
  *  with a now-playing ⇄ panel toggle — two columns only make sense at
  *  desktop widths. */
 const NARROW_BREAKPOINT = 900;
 
+/**
+ * The view fades in everywhere but Linux. WebKitGTK 2.54 rebuilds its
+ * layers each time a video appears inside a full-window layer that is
+ * still animating, and a motion cover or Canvas mounting during the fade
+ * blacked the whole window out three times before it settled. Without the
+ * fade one short flash is left: WebKit creating the video layer itself.
+ */
+const FADE_IN = LINUX ? "" : " animate-fade-in";
+
 interface ImmersiveViewProps {
   /** Which entry point opened the view — only used to pick the first
    *  column in the narrow single-column fallback. */
@@ -247,8 +257,9 @@ export function ImmersiveView({
       className="dark fixed inset-0 z-100 bg-zinc-950"
     >
       {/* Blurred artwork background — flat dark gradient fallback. Same
-          recipe as the old overlays. `animate-fade-in` lives here so the
-          opaque `bg-zinc-950` above paints solid from frame 1.
+          recipe as the old overlays. The fade-in (`FADE_IN`, none on
+          Linux) lives here so the opaque `bg-zinc-950` above paints solid
+          from frame 1.
 
           Deliberately a pre-resized variant, and **only** one: behind
           `blur-3xl` at 150% scale a 128 px source is indistinguishable,
@@ -266,7 +277,7 @@ export function ImmersiveView({
           variant means the gradient, not the animation. It still plays,
           once, on the foreground cover. A stream's `path` is the one
           exception — see `streamBackdrop`. */}
-      <div className="absolute inset-0 overflow-hidden animate-fade-in">
+      <div className={`absolute inset-0 overflow-hidden${FADE_IN}`}>
         {staticBackdrop ? (
           <Artwork
             path={streamBackdrop}
@@ -284,7 +295,7 @@ export function ImmersiveView({
       </div>
 
       {/* Foreground */}
-      <div className="relative h-full flex flex-col text-white animate-fade-in">
+      <div className={`relative h-full flex flex-col text-white${FADE_IN}`}>
         {/* Shared top bar — panel toggle + share + close. Absolute so
             the columns own the full height underneath. The side panel
             measures it to know how much of its own top line is free.
diff --git a/src/hooks/usePlayableVideo.ts b/src/hooks/usePlayableVideo.ts
index b8ec67d8..a804b02e 100644
--- a/src/hooks/usePlayableVideo.ts
+++ b/src/hooks/usePlayableVideo.ts
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ import { getLocalVideoBaseUrl } from "../lib/tauri/canvas";
  * seconds in and never resumes. WebView2 and WKWebView play the asset URL
  * directly.
  */
-const LINUX =
+export const LINUX =
   /linux/i.test(navigator.userAgent) && !/android/i.test(navigator.userAgent);
 
 /** Asked once per launch: the server's port and token do not change. */