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Smooth FPS for fluid simulation on phones
Start simple
Open the live simulation and leave Quality on Auto. Paint with one finger. If the dock feels heavy, try Calm first.
Most phones handle the default settings fine for a short session. Problems usually show up after a few minutes of continuous painting, once the device warms up.
If the canvas feels sluggish right away, close other tabs before changing any fluid setting. A background video competing for the same GPU is a common cause.
Cut costly looks
Bloom and sunrays look great and cost GPU time. Turn them off under Advanced when a phone warms up. Lower brush size also reduces work per stroke.
Bloom blurs and recombines bright areas of the frame to create a soft glow, which means extra passes over the image on top of the normal fluid step. Sunrays add another pass for the light shaft look. Each effect is optional, and neither one changes how the fluid itself moves underneath.
Brush size changes how much force and color enters the field per stroke, so a wide brush asks the solver to update a larger area every time you drag. A smaller brush covers less ground per pass, which is an easy way to lighten the load without touching a single quality setting.
Heat still matters
A warm phone throttles. Pause when you step away. Close extra tabs. These steps keep the fluid interactive without changing the solver.
Thermal throttling is a hardware response, not a bug in the page. Once a chip runs too warm, the operating system slows it down to protect itself, and no setting on this site can override that behavior.
A phone resting flat on a soft surface traps heat more than one standing up or resting on something hard. If a long session is the plan, propping the phone up for airflow helps as much as any setting in the dock.
Know when Auto is helping
Auto quality steps dye resolution down when FPS drops and steps it back up when the phone recovers. You do not need to touch it yourself.
The step itself is small and usually not something you consciously notice mid-stroke. What you do notice is the dock staying responsive instead of lagging behind your finger, which is the actual goal of the feature.
Forcing a high quality level on a phone that keeps dropping frames fights against what Auto is trying to do. If a session feels consistently rough rather than occasionally, dropping the manual setting one step and leaving it there often feels smoother than letting Auto hunt back and forth. Each quality step changes dye resolution, and those steps are mapped in fluid simulation controls.
Some modes cost less than others
Calm keeps swirl and fade gentle, which tends to run light on older phones. Fire pushes swirl and bloom harder for its look, so it asks more of the GPU. Pick calm mode first on a struggling device.
Water sits in between, since it skips Fire's aggressive bloom but still asks for a steady velocity field to keep its trails lasting and smooth. Ink leans lighter too, closer to Calm, because its main cost is lingering dye rather than heavy swirl or glow.
If a specific mode matters for what you are making, like a fire-themed capture, try it at a lower manual quality before giving up on it. A struggling phone at medium quality in Fire mode can still look better than expected, just not as crisp as the same mode on a desktop.