[6][7] The API is mainly designed to bring up a high-performance OpenGL compatibility to Microsoft Windows and to web browsers such as Chromium by translating OpenGL calls to Direct3D, which has much better driver support on Windows systems.

[8] ANGLE is currently used by Google Chrome (embedded into the Blink browser engine), Firefox,[9] Edge, WebKit, and the Qt Framework.

The project started as a way for Google to bring full hardware acceleration for WebGL to Windows without relying on OpenGL graphics drivers.

[13] The current production version (2.1.x) implements OpenGL ES 2.0, 3.0, 3.1 and EGL 1.5, claiming to pass the conformance tests for both.

Work was started on then future OpenGL ES 3.0 version,[8] for the newer Direct3D 11 backend.