Xwayland outside your Wayland
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Shawn Wallace 557ebeb616 xstate/settings: Clamp scale to >=1
Avoids crashing, and GTK apps also seem to generally dislike
when the reported DPI is less than the default.

Fixes #181
2025-06-29 16:24:45 -04:00
.github ok move it for real this time 2025-05-27 21:47:20 -04:00
macros server: refactor to use ECS 2025-06-19 00:55:08 -04:00
resources Document systemd support and add example service file 2024-07-07 15:55:24 -04:00
src xstate/settings: Clamp scale to >=1 2025-06-29 16:24:45 -04:00
tests Recognize drag and drop window type 2025-06-29 16:15:20 -04:00
testwl server: verify selection offer is still valid when handling clipboard 2025-06-29 01:37:24 -04:00
wl_drm Set input focus on windows without WM_HINTS input flag 2024-05-20 01:26:06 -04:00
.gitignore Initial commit 2024-04-29 00:30:06 -04:00
ARCHITECTURE.md Add ARCHITECTURE.md 2025-04-16 23:32:18 -04:00
build.rs Add git revision to log 2025-05-28 23:10:53 -04:00
Cargo.lock server: refactor to use ECS 2025-06-19 00:55:08 -04:00
Cargo.toml server: refactor to use ECS 2025-06-19 00:55:08 -04:00
flake.lock cargo and nix update 2025-02-10 23:08:39 -05:00
flake.nix Refactor flake for overridability, conditional service install, version formatting (#65) 2024-10-27 17:59:15 -04:00
LICENSE Initial commit 2024-04-29 00:30:06 -04:00
README.md Mention GitHub Discussions in readme and issue opener thingy 2025-05-27 21:44:16 -04:00

xwayland-satellite

xwayland-satellite grants rootless Xwayland integration to any Wayland compositor implementing xdg_wm_base and viewporter. This is particularly useful for compositors that (understandably) do not want to go through implementing support for rootless Xwayland themselves.

Found a bug? Open a bug report.

Need help troubleshooting, or have some other general question? Ask on GitHub Discussions.

Dependencies

  • Xwayland >=23.1
  • xcb
  • xcb-util-cursor
  • clang (building only)

Usage

Run xwayland-satellite. You can specify an X display to use (i.e. :12). Be sure to set the same DISPLAY environment variable for any X11 clients. Because xwayland-satellite is a Wayland client (in addition to being a Wayland compositor), it will need to launch after your compositor launches, but obviously before any X11 applications.

Building

# dev build
cargo build
# release build
cargo build --release

# run - will also build if not already built
cargo run # --release

Systemd support

xwayland-satellite can be built with systemd support - simply add -F systemd to your build command - i.e. cargo build --release -F systemd.

With systemd support, satellite will send a state change notification when Xwayland has been initialized, allowing for having services dependent on satellite's startup.

An example service file is located in resources/xwayland-satellite.service - be sure to replace the ExecStart line with the proper location before using it. It can be placed in a systemd user unit directory (i.e. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/systemd/user or /etc/systemd/user), and be launched and enabled with systemctl --user enable --now xwayland-satellite. It will be started when the graphical-session.target is reached, which is likely after your compositor is started if it supports systemd.

Scaling/HiDPI

For most GTK and Qt apps, xwayland-satellite should automatically scale them properly. Note that for mixed DPI monitor setups, satellite will choose the smallest monitor's DPI, meaning apps may have small text on other monitors.

Other miscellaneous apps (such as Wine apps) may have small text on HiDPI displays. It is application dependent on getting apps to scale properly with satellite, so you will have to figure out what app specific config needs to be set. See the Arch Wiki on HiDPI for a good place start.

Satellite acts as an Xsettings manager for setting scaling related settings, but will get out of the way of other Xsettings managers. To manually set these settings, try xsettingsd or another Xsettings manager.

Wayland protocols used

The host compositor must implement the following protocols/interfaces for satellite to function:

  • Core interfaces (wl_output, wl_surface, wl_compositor, etc)
  • xdg_shell (xdg_wm_base, xdg_surface, xdg_popup, xdg_toplevel)
  • wp_viewporter - used for scaling

Additionally, satellite can optionally take advantage of the following protocols:

  • Linux dmabuf
  • XDG activation
  • XDG foreign
  • Pointer constraints
  • Tablet input
  • Fractional scale