Running Qtile as a Wayland Compositor

Some functionality may not yet be implemented in the Wayland compositor. Please see the Wayland To Do List discussion for the current state of development. Also checkout the unresolved Wayland-specific issues and troubleshooting for tips on how to debug Wayland problems.

Note

We currently support wlroots>=0.17.0,<0.18.0 and pywlroots>=0.17.0,<0.18.0.

Backend-Specific Configuration

If you want your config file to work with different backends but want some options set differently per backend, you can check the name of the current backend in your config as follows:

from libqtile import qtile

if qtile.core.name == "x11":
    term = "urxvt"
elif qtile.core.name == "wayland":
    term = "foot"

Running X11-Only Programs

Qtile supports XWayland but requires that wlroots and pywlroots were built with XWayland support, and that XWayland is installed on the system from startup. XWayland will be started the first time it is needed.

XWayland windows sometimes don't receive mouse events

There is currently a known bug (https://github.com/qtile/qtile/issues/3675) which causes pointer events (hover/click/scroll) to propagate to the wrong window when switching focus.

Input Device Configuration

InputConfig

class libqtile.backend.wayland.InputConfig(**config: Any)[source]

This is used to configure input devices. An instance of this class represents one set of settings that can be applied to an input device.

To use this, define a dictionary called wl_input_rules in your config. The keys are used to match input devices, and the values are instances of this class with the desired settings. For example:

from libqtile.backend.wayland import InputConfig

wl_input_rules = {
    "1267:12377:ELAN1300:00 04F3:3059 Touchpad": InputConfig(left_handed=True),
    "*": InputConfig(left_handed=True, pointer_accel=True),
    "type:keyboard": InputConfig(kb_options="ctrl:nocaps,compose:ralt"),
}

When a input device is being configured, the most specific matching key in the dictionary is found and the corresponding settings are used to configure the device. Unique identifiers are chosen first, then "type:X", then "*".

The command qtile cmd-obj -o core -f get_inputs can be used to get information about connected devices, including their identifiers.

Options default to None, leave a device's default settings intact. For information on what each option does, see the documenation for libinput: https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/configuration.html. Note that devices often only support a subset of settings.

This tries to mirror how Sway configures libinput devices. For more information check out sway-input(5): https://man.archlinux.org/man/sway-input.5#LIBINPUT_CONFIGURATION

Keyboards, managed by xkbcommon, are configured with the options prefixed by kb_. X11's helpful XKB guide may be useful for figuring out the syntax for some of these settings.

Configuration options

key	default	description
`accel_profile`	`None`	`'adaptive'` or `'flat'`
`click_method`	`None`	`'none'`, `'button_areas'` or `'clickfinger'`
`drag`	`None`	`True` or `False`
`drag_lock`	`None`	`True` or `False`
`dwt`	`None`	True or False
`kb_layout`	`None`	Keyboard layout i.e. `XKB_DEFAULT_LAYOUT`
`kb_options`	`None`	Keyboard options i.e. `XKB_DEFAULT_OPTIONS`
`kb_repeat_delay`	`600`	Keyboard delay in milliseconds before repeating
`kb_repeat_rate`	`25`	Keyboard key repeats made per second
`kb_variant`	`None`	Keyboard variant i.e. `XKB_DEFAULT_VARIANT`
`left_handed`	`None`	`True` or `False`
`middle_emulation`	`None`	`True` or `False`
`natural_scroll`	`None`	`True` or `False`
`pointer_accel`	`None`	A `float` between -1 and 1.
`scroll_button`	`None`	`'disable'`, 'Button[1-3,8,9]' or a keycode
`scroll_method`	`None`	`'none'`, `'two_finger'`, `'edge'`, or `'on_button_down'`
`tap`	`None`	`True` or `False`
`tap_button_map`	`None`	`'lrm'` or `'lmr'`

If you want to change keyboard configuration during runtime, you can use the core's set_keymap command (see below).

Core Commands

See the Wayland backend section in the API Commands documentation.