Kill shader compilation stutter in your Proton games on Linux. Compiles your games' DirectX 12 pipelines and DirectX 11 shaders into the driver's cache before you play.
Unofficial Linux port of SCSKiller (Windows), by the SCSKiller authors. Shaderless is not affiliated with or endorsed by the SCSKiller project. Bugs in this port are ours. Please don't report them to SCSKiller.
Warning
Beta. Compiling is tested on NVIDIA only. On AMD the app opens and runs (a tester confirmed it), but nobody has confirmed a compile result there yet. AMD testers wanted!
Modern games (especially Unreal Engine 5) compile shaders while you play. Every new effect or area can freeze the game for a moment. Shaderless compiles them ahead of time, through the same Proton / vkd3d-proton / DXVK your game uses, so the game finds them already compiled.
- Finds your games in Steam, Heroic (Epic games) and Lutris (Epic Store games and games in their own folder). See Library support for what's tested
- Reads the game's own shader archives using SCSKiller's engine readers (Unreal, Unity, FromSoftware, RE Engine, REDengine, Dagor, Northlight, …)
- Compiles everything with all CPU cores, inside the game's own Proton prefix and Proton version
- ⏺ Record mode (DirectX 12): learns exactly what your game asks for while you play, then compiles exactly that
| Launcher | Status |
|---|---|
| Steam | Works. Tested on this port's main test machine. |
| Heroic | Epic games: found, compiled in the game's own prefix, and the cache installed where the game reads it (checked with one game, A Short Hike, where all 2,402 DirectX 11 shaders compile cleanly). Note that 32-bit games use a separate 32-bit NVIDIA driver subfolder, see the DirectX 11 note below. A Heroic 64-bit DirectX 12 game hasn't been tested yet. GOG / Amazon: not supported yet. |
| Lutris | Epic Games Store games (installed through Lutris): found and compiled (one game, End of Abyss, Unreal Engine 5). The game uses the compiled cache: pipelines it had to compile itself dropped from 94% to 7% (one game, see test results). Games added by their exe (for example a DRM-free copy): found, compiled, and the cache installed where the game reads it, checked with the game's real settings (one game, Proton-CachyOS; no stutter measurements). Games from a Lutris installer script: implemented, not tested. GOG / other launchers in a Wine prefix: not found yet. |
| Flatpak versions of Steam, Heroic and Lutris | Works. Discovers games installed in Flatpak Steam (~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam), Flatpak Heroic (~/.var/app/com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl) and Flatpak Lutris (~/.var/app/net.lutris.Lutris), compiles them in their own prefix and Proton runtime, and links the compiled cache into each Flatpak app's sandbox cache folder. Tested on all 3 Flatpak launchers (The Witcher 3, A Short Hike, End of Abyss). |
DirectX 11 games: Supported for 64-bit DirectX 11 games across all supported engines (Unreal, Unity, FromSoftware, RE Engine, REDengine, Dagor, Northlight, …). Shaderless extracts every DirectX 11 (SM4/SM5 DXBC) shader directly from the game's files (no recording needed) and compiles them through Proton's DXVK into your GPU driver's Vulkan cache. Known limit for 32-bit (x86) games: our warmer binary (shaderless_warm.exe) is 64-bit (x86_64), so on NVIDIA it writes into the 64-bit libnvidia-glcore.so subfolder inside GLCache, whereas a 32-bit game (such as A Short Hike) loads 32-bit libnvidia-glcore.so and uses a separate 32-bit subfolder inside GLCache.
AMD (Mesa) and Lutris: the step that installs the compiled cache where a Lutris game reads it is only done for the NVIDIA cache and the vkd3d-proton cache. Mesa's cache isn't handled yet, so AMD users on Lutris may not see the full effect. We have no AMD machine to test on.
If your games don't show up, please open an issue with the launcher and where the game lives.
Needs Steam with Proton (Heroic / Lutris libraries are partly supported, see Library support), and WebKitGTK (webkit2gtk-4.1) for the window.
Download Shaderless-v0.2.1-beta-linux-x64.tar.gz from Releases:
tar -xzf Shaderless-v0.2.1-beta-linux-x64.tar.gz
cd Shaderless-v0.2.1-beta-linux-x64
./run-gui.sh # launch the app
./install-desktop.sh # optional: adds Shaderless (with its icon) to your app menu and desktopRequirements: .NET 10 SDK, Steam with Proton (tested with Proton-CachyOS), WebKitGTK (for the GUI).
git clone https://github.com/cyberps96/Shaderless.git
cd Shaderless
./run-gui.sh # the app
./install-desktop.sh # optional: adds Shaderless (with its icon) to your app menu and desktop
./run-cli.sh status # or the command line: status, list, diagnose, settings, compile "<game>", compile-all, clear "<game>", clear-allThe two Windows-side helpers (d3d12.dll recorder, shaderless_warm.exe warmer) are prebuilt in
src/SCSKiller.Linux.Core/Native/. To rebuild them from source you need mingw-w64, then run ./build-native.sh.
- Start Shaderless and click ⏺ Record on your game.
- Play for 5–10 minutes and close the game. The first session still stutters, because that's the session being recorded.
- Click ⚡ Compile / Re-Compile.
- Play. What you recorded is now smooth. Leave Record on: each session adds anything new, and the next Re-Compile only compiles the new pipelines (incremental re-compile).
- ⚙️ Settings (both OFF by default): Open ⚙️ Settings in the header (or run
./run-cli.sh settings) to optionally turn on Record all games automatically (installs the recorder on eligible DX12 games without anti-cheat) and Compile automatically after a game closes (watches for recorded games exiting and compiles new pipelines automatically while the app is open). - Stale detection: After a GPU driver update, Proton update, or game patch, Shaderless marks affected caches as Stale so you know when a full Re-Compile is needed.
On Windows with NVIDIA, a shader compiled once works with any pipeline state. On Linux, vkd3d-proton turns every DirectX 12 pipeline into a Vulkan pipeline that includes its full state (vertex layout, render-target formats, blend mode…). Without a recording, Shaderless has to guess that state, and wrong guesses are wasted. The recording teaches it the real state, and Shaderless also applies what it learns to shaders you haven't reached yet.
Known limit: areas you've never visited can still hitch the first time (on Valor Mortis it was short, about one burst while new content streamed in). Keep Record on and Re-Compile, and they get covered.
All 3 games on the same machine: RTX 3070 · NVIDIA 615.78.08 · CachyOS. Timings measured by the recorder itself. "Had to compile" means a pipeline create over 3 ms, the rule SCSKiller uses.
| Game | Session | Had to compile | Typical create time | Slowest create | Compile time during loading screens |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Blood of Dawnwalker (Steam, Proton) | 1: no cache | 85.5% | 37 ms | 3.8 s | 205 s |
| 2: after Record + Re-Compile | 1.1% | 0.24 ms | 270 ms | 30 s | |
| Valor Mortis (Steam, Proton) | 1: no matching cache | 48.9% | 2.83 ms | — | 170 s |
| 2: after Record + Re-Compile | 6.0% | 0.29 ms | — | 112 s | |
| 3: after 2nd round (new areas visited) | 8.7% | 0.35 ms | — | 56 s | |
| End of Abyss (Epic Games Store, through Lutris) | 1: no cache | 94.4% | 44 ms | 5.9 s | — |
| 2: after Record + Re-Compile | 6.7% | 0.28 ms | 30 ms | — | |
| 3: after 2nd Re-Compile, plus a new area | 2.1% | 0.25 ms | 289 ms | — |
- The Blood of Dawnwalker (Unreal Engine 5, GE-Proton 11-7): about 17 minutes in session 1 and 10 minutes in session 2 (~19,800 vs ~19,500 pipeline creates; 99.4% of session 2's creates were already known from the 120,041-pipeline compile).
- Valor Mortis (Unreal Engine 5): about 10 minutes per session. New ray tracing pipelines at load: — / 315 / 11.
- End of Abyss (Unreal Engine 5, UMU-Proton 10.0-4): sessions 2 and 3 repeat the route of session 1 (about 7,250 pipeline creates each, so the comparison is like for like). Compiles after the first minute of play: 213 / 0 / 60. Session 3 then enters an area the first two never visited, and that is where the remaining hitch is: 58 compiles in one 30-second burst.
- One route per game, no frame-time measurements.
Caveat: the game also writes its own shader cache while you play, and that cache was still in place for sessions 2 and 3. So part of the improvement may come from the game's own cache from the previous session, not only from Shaderless. We have not yet run a test that separates the two.
After launching the game with Record on, a shaderless.log should appear next to the game's real exe. For Unreal games
that's <Game>/Binaries/Win64/, not the top folder. If it doesn't appear, add this to the game's Steam launch options:
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="d3d12=n,b" %command%
- The window doesn't open / is blank (Wayland, AMD or NVIDIA): start it with
./run-gui.sh(it setsGDK_BACKEND=x11and turns off WebKit's DMA-BUF renderer). Don't launch the binary directly. webkit2gtk/libwebkit2gtk-4.1not found: install it (Arch/CachyOS:webkit2gtk-4.1, Debian/Ubuntu:libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0, Fedora:webkit2gtk4.1).- No games listed: Shaderless reads Steam, Heroic (Epic) and Lutris libraries from both native and Flatpak install folders. Lutris games that run through a launcher other than the Epic Games Store (for example GOG Galaxy) aren't found yet. Run
./run-cli.sh diagnoseto print a full diagnostic report (no personal paths) of every launcher path checked and game found. - Which version am I on? It's shown in the app header, or run
./run-cli.sh --version. Please include it in bug reports. - Games with anti-cheat: see Anti-cheat games below.
Warning
Games with anti-cheat (EasyAntiCheat, BattlEye, …) can ban accounts over unknown files in their folder. Shaderless is careful here, but we can't guarantee anything on your behalf. Use it at your own risk.
- Record mode is refused. Shaderless looks for anti-cheat files in the game's folder. If it finds one, it will not install the recorder.
- Compiling still works. It shows a notice, then compiles outside the game, in the game's Proton prefix. It does not copy its cache file into the game's folder. (This part hasn't been tested on a real anti-cheat game yet.)
- Detection isn't perfect. It's based on files in the game's folder, so an unusual anti-cheat could be missed. If in doubt, don't use Record on online games.
- The Windows SCSKiller handles anti-cheat in more detail (per-game statuses, an opt-in offline mode). Shaderless doesn't have those yet.
- Record mode adds a few small files next to the game's exe (
d3d12.dll,shaderless.ini,shaderless.armed, keys, and the recording and log it produces). It refuses to replace another mod'sd3d12.dll. - It only records which pipelines the game creates: no input, no network.
- Clicking Recording (on) again removes the recorder and every file it added.
- For games without anti-cheat, a finished compile also copies a
vkd3d-proton.cachefile next to the game's exe.
Shaderless switches to AMD mode automatically (Mesa / RADV). The app opens and runs on AMD (a tester confirmed it), but nobody has confirmed a compile result yet. If you have an AMD GPU, please try Record → play → Re-Compile → play on any DX12 Proton game and open an AMD test report issue. The most useful part is where the shader cache was written and how big it is. Check:
~/.cache/mesa_shader_cache*(or$MESA_SHADER_CACHE_DIR)~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/shadercache/<appid>/~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/<appid>/(look forvkd3d-proton.cache*)
Done: game discovery (native + Flatpak), all engine readers, planning, compile through Proton, Record mode, incremental re-compile, optional automatic recording of all games, optional automatic compile after a game closes, and driver/Proton/game-update stale detection.
Not yet: community recordings, compile queue, and some recorder extras (frame-time logging, recording alongside ReShade/other d3d12.dll mods, NVAPI state).
Shaderless is free and stays free: no paid features.
If it saved your games from stutter and you'd like to support the Linux port:
| Currency | Network | Address |
|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin (BTC) | Bitcoin (SegWit) | bc1q3hefk7fswsgq5zxed05vy0v4rt2qks90en5mjp |
| Solana (SOL) | Solana | cQiSktSJbtLNEpZZwsKw8NxEpdXeLKTKXDnCccS6f9g |
| Litecoin (LTC) | Litecoin | LLdkGKhNdWJwRjHm4RERn9qnEuCzRBAnZK |
| USDT (Tether) | Tron (TRC-20) only | TStfK2yMPrV5xzXffGaaoMd2CU6RDHTvbg |
Send only the listed coin on the listed network. For example, USDT sent on Ethereum (ERC-20) to the Tron address is lost.
The core of this tool is SCSKiller's work. Please consider supporting the original author too: SCSKiller on Patreon.
GPL-3.0-or-later, with the additional permission in LICENSE-EXCEPTION.txt, the same as SCSKiller.
Copyright (C) 2026 The SCSKiller authors; Linux port (Shaderless) Copyright (C) 2026 cyberps96 and the Shaderless contributors.
This is a modified version of SCSKiller: the Linux app, game sources, Proton integration, warmer and recorder ports live in
src/; the parts of SCSKiller it uses (SCSKiller.Core + one warmer file, with a small Linux patch) are in upstream/. Third-party components: THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.
Not affiliated with any GPU maker, engine maker or game publisher. All product names are trademarks of their owners.