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WebGLProgram

Baseline

Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

* Some parts of this feature may have varying levels of support.

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Note: This feature is available in Web Workers.

The WebGLProgram is part of the WebGL API and is a combination of two compiled WebGLShaders consisting of a vertex shader and a fragment shader (both written in GLSL).

To create a WebGLProgram, call the GL context's createProgram() function. After attaching the shader programs using attachShader(), you link them into a usable program. This is shown in the code below.

const program = gl.createProgram();

// Attach pre-existing shaders
gl.attachShader(program, vertexShader);
gl.attachShader(program, fragmentShader);

gl.linkProgram(program);

if (!gl.getProgramParameter(program, gl.LINK_STATUS)) {
  const info = gl.getProgramInfoLog(program);
  throw new Error(`Could not compile WebGL program. \n\n${info}`);
}

See WebGLShader for information on creating the vertexShader and fragmentShader in the above example.

Examples

Using the program

The steps to actually do some work with the program involve telling the GPU to use the program, bind the appropriate data and configuration options, and finally draw something to the screen.

// Use the program
gl.useProgram(program);

// Bind existing attribute data
gl.bindBuffer(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, buffer);
gl.enableVertexAttribArray(attributeLocation);
gl.vertexAttribPointer(attributeLocation, 3, gl.FLOAT, false, 0, 0);

// Draw a single triangle
gl.drawArrays(gl.TRIANGLES, 0, 3);

Deleting the program

If there is an error linking the program or you wish to delete an existing program, then it is as simple as running WebGLRenderingContext.deleteProgram(). This frees the memory of the linked program.

gl.deleteProgram(program);

Specifications

Specification
WebGL Specification # 5.6

Browser compatibility

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This page was last modified on May 23, 2025 by MDN contributors.

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