---
title: Info Bar
order: 5
---

The Chisel info bar at the top of the 3D View shows the current engine state and warns about anything that might affect performance or correctness.

## What's displayed

- **Active engine** — Chisel / EEVEE / Cycles. Click to swap.
- **Shader compilation status** — *"Compiling shaders 3/14"* style progress label during the first run, or simply *"Ready"* once warmed up.
- **GPU backend** — Vulkan / OpenGL / Metal. Includes a recommendation banner if OpenGL is active on Windows or Linux.
- **Proxy / SDF view toggle** — when relevant, a button that swaps between the SDF render and the proxy mesh view (e.g. for mesh-based editing operations).

## Common warnings

- **"Shaders not compiled — first run may take longer"** — first viewport frame is compiling pipelines. Wait a few seconds; subsequent frames will be normal speed. See the [shader compilation note](../index.md#first-run-shader-compilation).
- **"OpenGL backend, Vulkan is much faster"** — Blender is on OpenGL. Switch backend in `Edit → Preferences → System → Backend` for a 5–10× speedup.
- **"Native library version mismatch"** — `armesher` is out of sync. Open [Preferences](../preferences.md) and click *Update Native Libraries*.

## Hiding the info bar

The info bar is part of Chisel's overlay set. It auto-hides when irrelevant (e.g., when not using the Chisel engine). You can also disable it from `Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Chisel` if you want a cleaner viewport.

## See also

- [Preferences](../preferences.md) — library status, GPU backend, shader recompile
- [Render Engine](../render-engine/index.md) — engine settings