Hi there!

A year and a half ago, I jumped ship from an iPhone to a Pixel 5a with GrapheneOS. It's been a fantastic move for me! Little by little I am doing my best to limit what I can in order to control my data.

However, I am running into an issue I started noticing months ago, probably around the time Android 14 released. It's definitely not a deal-breaker, just very jarring when I'm using the phone. I'm unsure if the issue lies in the apps I am using, GrapheneOS itself or maybe even upstream AOSP, but I thought I would reach out here first before I go asking questions on the respective forums/issue trackers to see if anyone has a similar issue. So far my research has showed no one having similar problems.

The main app in which I notice the issue is NewPipe. Whenever I load a video on my phone, if the video is not 60fps, the screen's refresh rate drops to match the framerate of the current video. It will stay at this lower framerate as long as the content is being rendered by the app. (For example, if I open the app switcher from NewPipe while it's playing a video, the refresh rate remains the lower framerate even if I move the app off screen, or if I minimize the video in app to browse my feed, the refresh rate is still lowered.) Only if I exit the app or move the app to the background does the screen return to the correct refresh rate.

Another app I notice the issue is with Discord. If someone sends a GIF or a video into a channel, the screen's refresh rate will lower to match the frame rate of the visible content. This happens even in the channel/server browser when the content is just barely visible to the right of the screen. If I'm scrolling a thread with only text messages or navigate away from the content, the screen refreshes just fine.

Very rarely, I've also encountered that exiting these applications do not put the screen back at the desired framerate, affecting the whole device regardless of what I was doing. I've had to perform reboots to get the screen to return to the correct state. Because of this, I've begun to wonder if this is an issue with Android itself.

I've dug through Developer Options to see if some magic toggle could help, but haven't found anything. I found the "Show refresh rate" option, but found that the screen is still reporting it's refreshing at 60fps regardless of when I reproduce the issues above. I also found that with "Pointer location" turned on, the pointer data refreshes at the same lower refresh rate with content on screen.

With all of the above, here are the apps where I have noticed the problem:

NewPipe
Discord
Findroid
Vanadium (rarely)
Anywhere in Android (very rarely, as mentioned before)

Is there something else I can try or has anyone else noticed a similar problem? Reinstalling the affected applications do not seem to help.

TL;DR: Any content I have on screen will cause my refresh rate to lower to match said content. With a handful of apps causing this issue and sometimes affecting the whole device itself, I wonder if there is a deeper problem here with GrapheneOS or AOSP.