If you’ve been presenting your meticulously crafted slides, dazzling HDR designs, or just your very colourful browser tabs over a video call lately and wondered why everything looks so disappointingly dull, you’re not imagining things—your HDR colours have indeed been getting the short end of the streaming stick. It turns out, neither your painstaking attention to colour grading nor your expensive HDR monitor was to blame. No, this crime against chromaticity originated, oddly enough, in the guts of the tools we use for screen sharing—specifically, within Google Chrome on Windows 11.
Let’s paint a picture. You join a Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams session, ready to show off the vibrant, eye-popping visuals you painstakingly crafted on your all-singing, all-dancing HDR display. You share your screen with a click, only for your audience to recoil at the washed-out, zombie-pale mess appearing on their screens. Gone is the deep contrast, the richness of the reds, the subtlety of the shadows, replaced by a flat, uninspiring wash.
This almost institutional blandness wasn’t (as your inner cynic might have suspected) an intentional move to keep video meetings boring. Instead, it was a quirky side effect of the technology stack that Chromium-based browsers—including Chrome, Edge, and a slew of others—leaned on to let apps broadcast your screen over the wire.
Unfortunately, DXGI Duplicator isn’t exactly renowned for its aptitude in managing HDR (High Dynamic Range) content or for understanding the nuanced dance of modern colour spaces. In non-technical terms, it's a bit like hiring someone with poor eyesight to repaint a masterpiece (with the lights off). Every time someone with an HDR monitor shared their screen, the spectacular contrast and vibrancy just didn’t make it to their audience. Instead, DXGI Duplicator funneled the image into a sort of chromatic purgatory: colours were flattened, contrast was squashed, and every proud HDR display owner was left pining for what might have been.
This flattened effect wasn’t just a minor nuisance for perfectionist designers or photographers. Colleagues, clients, and creative partners alike endured these bland broadcasts, none the wiser as to why the latest UI mockup or stunning photograph looked so depressingly lifeless when screen-shared.
Amusingly, your network connection, your favourite video conferencing app, and even your own colour calibration were all innocent bystanders in this drab affair.
The crowning glory of WGC isn’t just better colour support (including for HDR displays), but also a quirky little attribute called "DirtyRegionMode." While it sounds like a villain in a superhero comic, it’s actually an ingenious efficiency tool. It tells Chrome—and, by extension, other Chromium browsers—exactly what portion of the screen changed. No more hunting pixel by pixel, frame by frame. No more wasteful capturing of static images. The result? Smoother sharing, lighter system loads, and, you guessed it, stunning, accurate colours as they appear on your display.
DXGI Duplicator never quite got the memo on HDR. Its grasp of colour space is, let’s say, the technological equivalent of painting by numbers when your monitor is displaying the Mona Lisa. This mismatch left users—especially those relying on HDR hardware—stuck with broadcasts that were anything but true to the originals.
For years, this limitation wasn’t a huge deal because HDR displays were semi-rare in day-to-day business contexts. But as more creative, development, and business professionals bring top-tier tech to their workflow (and their work-from-home setups), fidelity stopped being a luxury and became an expectation.
For digital artists, designers, video creators, and anyone else who lives at the mercy of colour, the impact is huge. Finally, what you see—and share—is truly what everyone else gets to see too.
And, for everyone else? Meetings and presentations become just a little less dull, both figuratively and literally.
Microsoft, to its credit, occasionally backports exciting features to older Windows editions. But in the case of WGC, which relies on architectural improvements and new APIs baked deep into Windows 11 24H2, it’s a no-go for Windows 11 23H2 or, heaven forbid, Windows 10. If you’re stuck on those versions, you’ll have to accept a little chromatic compromise for now.
That means, regardless of which Chromium browser you prefer for sharing your spreadsheets or cat wallpapers, you’ll be transmitting the real deal: all the dazzling hues, untouched by the drab hand of DXGI Duplicator.
Oh, and because WGC is smarter and more efficient, you might notice your computer sighing with relief next time you’re stuck on a marathon all-hands call. DirtyRegionMode ensures that if nothing on your screen changes—say, when you pause for a dramatic effect—the browser doesn’t waste cycles capturing frames of stillness.
With this update, those complicated rituals get a one-way ticket to the digital history books. No more sifting through Reddit, desperately seeking a registry hack that promises “better HDR screen sharing” (and ends up breaking something else). No more apologizing before any big meeting: “It normally looks much better on my screen, honest.”
But the weak link has always been interface fidelity. If your browser can’t present things as they are intended—especially as displays, colour gamuts, and refresh rates keep scaling up—then the user experience breaks down. Microsoft’s integration of WGC into the Chromium workflow isn’t just a perk for designers; it’s a foundational improvement in how the modern web interfaces with our hardware.
Ultimately, users expect that what they see on their screens can be shared accurately, with no “gotchas” undermining the message. As WGC ships broadly and becomes standard, this expectation finally meets reality.
The “DirtyRegionMode” attribute isn’t just about saving CPU cycles. By only capturing screen regions that have changed, WGC frees up resources for other things—like keeping your fan noise to a minimum or preserving battery life if you’re on a laptop. There’s also less risk of “stale” frames making their way into calls, so every pixel is as fresh as can be.
And in Windows 11 24H2, WGC avoids the pitfalls that once forced Microsoft to disable it—namely, the lack of support for “0Hz refresh rates” (which, for the record, don’t translate to psychedelic screensavers but are a quirk of how some displays behave when idle). Now that those roadblocks are cleared, WGC is free to shine.
There’s no need for user-side tinkering if you’re running Windows 11 24H2 or newer. For everyone who lives for the latest and greatest (hello, Windows Insiders!), you might already be seeing these juicy, vivid colours pop up during your screen shares.
The point? Microsoft isn’t just putting a fresh coat of paint (or accurate colourspace, as it were) on Windows 11—they’re cementing the platform’s growing synergy with the Chromium-powered web.
With Windows 11 24H2, Microsoft has finally answered a pain point that has annoyed creative professionals and remote workers for far too long. The fix is under the hood, silent and seamless—but for anyone who’s seen their best work dulled by technology, this is a leap worth celebrating.
From here, the future looks bright. Literally.
Source: Windows Latest Microsoft fixes Chrome's washed-out (dull) HDR colours on Windows 11 24H2
The Washed-Out Reality of Screen Sharing
Let’s paint a picture. You join a Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams session, ready to show off the vibrant, eye-popping visuals you painstakingly crafted on your all-singing, all-dancing HDR display. You share your screen with a click, only for your audience to recoil at the washed-out, zombie-pale mess appearing on their screens. Gone is the deep contrast, the richness of the reds, the subtlety of the shadows, replaced by a flat, uninspiring wash.This almost institutional blandness wasn’t (as your inner cynic might have suspected) an intentional move to keep video meetings boring. Instead, it was a quirky side effect of the technology stack that Chromium-based browsers—including Chrome, Edge, and a slew of others—leaned on to let apps broadcast your screen over the wire.
Chromium and the Case of the Dull Displays
The key culprit? Chrome’s screen-capturing method for start screens and windows during video calls: the prescription-strength, but aesthetically challenged, DXGI Duplicator API. For years, anyone who hit the “Share your screen” button in Chrome unknowingly triggered this behind-the-scenes process, trusting it to faithfully ferry every juicy pixel from their desktop to others.Unfortunately, DXGI Duplicator isn’t exactly renowned for its aptitude in managing HDR (High Dynamic Range) content or for understanding the nuanced dance of modern colour spaces. In non-technical terms, it's a bit like hiring someone with poor eyesight to repaint a masterpiece (with the lights off). Every time someone with an HDR monitor shared their screen, the spectacular contrast and vibrancy just didn’t make it to their audience. Instead, DXGI Duplicator funneled the image into a sort of chromatic purgatory: colours were flattened, contrast was squashed, and every proud HDR display owner was left pining for what might have been.
This flattened effect wasn’t just a minor nuisance for perfectionist designers or photographers. Colleagues, clients, and creative partners alike endured these bland broadcasts, none the wiser as to why the latest UI mockup or stunning photograph looked so depressingly lifeless when screen-shared.
Not Your App’s Fault (For Once)
Let’s get one thing straight: If you ever blamed the fuzzy, faded visuals on Zoom, Meet, or Teams, it’s time to send those apps a small apology card. The actual issue was at a much lower level, down in how Chrome grabbed the pixels to be shared. Google Chrome’sgetDisplayMedia() function, which smartly routes screen-sharing requests, was simply doing its job: relying on the underlying DXGI Duplicator that Windows provided. In short, the capture was doomed from the get-go.Amusingly, your network connection, your favourite video conferencing app, and even your own colour calibration were all innocent bystanders in this drab affair.
Enter: Windows Graphics Capture, The Colour Saviour
Fortunately, change has arrived—armed with Rainbow Brite energy and a far better grasp of screen colours. Microsoft has rolled out a new screen capture framework in Windows 11 version 24H2, known as Windows Graphics Capture (WGC). This is not just a case of a new feature for the sake of new features. WGC represents a generational leap for anyone who cares about screen clarity and colour fidelity in video calls.The crowning glory of WGC isn’t just better colour support (including for HDR displays), but also a quirky little attribute called "DirtyRegionMode." While it sounds like a villain in a superhero comic, it’s actually an ingenious efficiency tool. It tells Chrome—and, by extension, other Chromium browsers—exactly what portion of the screen changed. No more hunting pixel by pixel, frame by frame. No more wasteful capturing of static images. The result? Smoother sharing, lighter system loads, and, you guessed it, stunning, accurate colours as they appear on your display.
Why Was This So Hard in the First Place?
Screen capture, deceptively simple though it sounds, is a surprisingly complex business. Every screen—especially modern HDR screens—juggles colour spaces, dynamic ranges, refresh rates, and more. For a browser to screen grab accurately, it must understand and respect all those variables.DXGI Duplicator never quite got the memo on HDR. Its grasp of colour space is, let’s say, the technological equivalent of painting by numbers when your monitor is displaying the Mona Lisa. This mismatch left users—especially those relying on HDR hardware—stuck with broadcasts that were anything but true to the originals.
For years, this limitation wasn’t a huge deal because HDR displays were semi-rare in day-to-day business contexts. But as more creative, development, and business professionals bring top-tier tech to their workflow (and their work-from-home setups), fidelity stopped being a luxury and became an expectation.
The Immediate Impact: Designers, Rejoice!
Imagine spending hours tuning the exact hue of a logo or tweaking the luminescence of a game asset, only to see a client’s jaw drop in horror—not because the design is cutting-edge, but because, to them, it looks like it’s been run through a greyscale filter. This sort of creative heartbreak is no longer inevitable on Windows 11 24H2.For digital artists, designers, video creators, and anyone else who lives at the mercy of colour, the impact is huge. Finally, what you see—and share—is truly what everyone else gets to see too.
And, for everyone else? Meetings and presentations become just a little less dull, both figuratively and literally.
What About the Rest of Us on Older Windows?
Now, for the $64,000 question—will this breakthrough come to earlier versions of Windows, or are you stuck in the land of faded tones until you update? At present, the answer is pretty clear: don’t hold your breath.Microsoft, to its credit, occasionally backports exciting features to older Windows editions. But in the case of WGC, which relies on architectural improvements and new APIs baked deep into Windows 11 24H2, it’s a no-go for Windows 11 23H2 or, heaven forbid, Windows 10. If you’re stuck on those versions, you’ll have to accept a little chromatic compromise for now.
Chromium Goes All-In on WGC
The changes aren’t limited to Google Chrome. Since most browsers—Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, you name it—are built atop the Chromium engine, all will benefit from Microsoft’s work, provided users are running on compatible Windows versions. In a somewhat rare display of true ecosystem teamwork, Chromium will now select WGC as the default screen capture method on compliant systems.That means, regardless of which Chromium browser you prefer for sharing your spreadsheets or cat wallpapers, you’ll be transmitting the real deal: all the dazzling hues, untouched by the drab hand of DXGI Duplicator.
Oh, and because WGC is smarter and more efficient, you might notice your computer sighing with relief next time you’re stuck on a marathon all-hands call. DirtyRegionMode ensures that if nothing on your screen changes—say, when you pause for a dramatic effect—the browser doesn’t waste cycles capturing frames of stillness.
Goodbye, Washed-Out Workarounds
Before WGC, some users tried to cheat fate—tweaking display settings, fiddling with GPU drivers, praying to obscure software gods—for even a hint of colour accuracy in video meetings. Others gave up and just emailed their work, hoping their intentions would somehow shine through the parade of dullness.With this update, those complicated rituals get a one-way ticket to the digital history books. No more sifting through Reddit, desperately seeking a registry hack that promises “better HDR screen sharing” (and ends up breaking something else). No more apologizing before any big meeting: “It normally looks much better on my screen, honest.”
The Broader Trend: PWAs, Capture APIs, and Better User Experiences
It’s worth stepping back for a second and sizing up what this means in the broader context. The web has rapidly matured in the past few years. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) have blurred the lines between browser tabs and native apps. Advanced capture APIs have empowered collaborative SaaS tools, virtual desktop environments, and all manner of cloud-first workflows.But the weak link has always been interface fidelity. If your browser can’t present things as they are intended—especially as displays, colour gamuts, and refresh rates keep scaling up—then the user experience breaks down. Microsoft’s integration of WGC into the Chromium workflow isn’t just a perk for designers; it’s a foundational improvement in how the modern web interfaces with our hardware.
Ultimately, users expect that what they see on their screens can be shared accurately, with no “gotchas” undermining the message. As WGC ships broadly and becomes standard, this expectation finally meets reality.
Peeking into the Technical Stuff: How WGC Works
If you fancy yourself a bit of a geek or just like to know how the sausage is made, here’s the skinny: Windows Graphics Capture uses more modern APIs that understand both SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) and HDR displays, as well as subtlety in colour spaces that would have baffled DXGI Duplicator.The “DirtyRegionMode” attribute isn’t just about saving CPU cycles. By only capturing screen regions that have changed, WGC frees up resources for other things—like keeping your fan noise to a minimum or preserving battery life if you’re on a laptop. There’s also less risk of “stale” frames making their way into calls, so every pixel is as fresh as can be.
And in Windows 11 24H2, WGC avoids the pitfalls that once forced Microsoft to disable it—namely, the lack of support for “0Hz refresh rates” (which, for the record, don’t translate to psychedelic screensavers but are a quirk of how some displays behave when idle). Now that those roadblocks are cleared, WGC is free to shine.
When Will You See This in Chrome?
Here’s where the bleeding edge meets the waiting game. As of the latest Chromium updates, Microsoft’s fixes have been applied to the codebase. But browser updates don’t show up for most folks overnight. Expect this colour renaissance to roll out in the coming weeks—with Chrome leading the charge, and other Chromium browsers right behind.There’s no need for user-side tinkering if you’re running Windows 11 24H2 or newer. For everyone who lives for the latest and greatest (hello, Windows Insiders!), you might already be seeing these juicy, vivid colours pop up during your screen shares.
A Sidebar: Table Mode Grows Up
On a semi-related note, Microsoft hasn’t just made Chrome better at sharing your screen—they’ve made it more productive within the core OS, too. Improvements to Chrome’s so-called “table mode” on Windows 11 mean better touch and tablet interactions, smoother navigation, and a generally more “native” browser feel on convertibles and tablets.The point? Microsoft isn’t just putting a fresh coat of paint (or accurate colourspace, as it were) on Windows 11—they’re cementing the platform’s growing synergy with the Chromium-powered web.
The Future: Screen Sharing Without Sacrifice
It might seem like a small thing, maybe even a “first-world problem,” that your meticulously composed gradients look a bit off in a Google Meet. But think about where we’re headed: remote work is routine, digital canvases are replacing desktops, and creative reviews happen more often over video streams than in person. In that world, colour accuracy isn’t just a “nice-to-have.” It’s table stakes.With Windows 11 24H2, Microsoft has finally answered a pain point that has annoyed creative professionals and remote workers for far too long. The fix is under the hood, silent and seamless—but for anyone who’s seen their best work dulled by technology, this is a leap worth celebrating.
From here, the future looks bright. Literally.
Source: Windows Latest Microsoft fixes Chrome's washed-out (dull) HDR colours on Windows 11 24H2
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