xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland

An XDG Desktop Portal is a program that lets other applications communicate with the compositor through D-Bus.

A portal implements certain functionalities, such as opening file pickers or screen sharing.

xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland is Hyprland’s xdg-desktop-portal implementation. It allows for screensharing, global shortcuts, etc.

ℹ️

Throughout this document, xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland will be referred to as XDPH.

XDPH doesn’t implement a file picker. For that, it is recommended to install xdg-desktop-portal-gtk alongside XDPH.

Installing

pacman -S xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland

or, for -git:

yay -S xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland-git

On NixOS, XDPH is already enabled by the NixOS module for Hyprland, through programs.hyprland.enable = true;.

Unmask dependencies

/etc/portage/profile/package.unmask

dev-qt/qtbase
dev-qt/qtwayland
dev-qt/qtdeclarative
dev-qt/qtshadertools

Apply necessary useflags

/etc/portage/package.use

dev-qt/qtbase opengl egl eglfs gles2-only
dev-qt/qtdeclarative opengl
sys-apps/xdg-desktop-portal screencast

Unmask dependencies and xdph

/etc/portage/package.accept_keywords

gui-libs/xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland 
dev-qt/qtbase
dev-qt/qtwayland
dev-qt/qtdeclarative
dev-qt/qtshadertools

btw those are the useflags that I have tested, you could also test others.

Installation

eselect repository enable guru
emaint sync -r guru
emerge --ask --verbose gui-libs/xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland

See The GitHub repo’s readme.

Usage

XDPH is automatically started by D-Bus, once Hyprland starts.

To check if everything is OK is, try to screenshare anything, or opening OBS and select the PipeWire source. If XDPH is running, a Qt menu will pop up asking you what to share.

XDPH will work on other wlroots compositors, but features available only on Hyprland will not work (e.g. window sharing).

For a nuclear option, you can use this script and exec-once it:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
sleep 1
killall -e xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland
killall xdg-desktop-portal
/usr/lib/xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland &
sleep 2
/usr/lib/xdg-desktop-portal &

Adjust the paths if they’re incorrect.

Share picker doesn’t use the system theme

Try one or both:

dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd --all
systemctl --user import-environment QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME

If it works, add it to your config in exec-once.

Using the KDE file picker with XDPH

XDPH does not implement a file picker and uses the GTK one as a fallback by default (see /usr/share/xdg-desktop-portal/hyprland-portals.conf). If you want to use the KDE file picker but let XDPH handle everything else, create a file ~/.config/xdg-desktop-portal/hyprland-portals.conf with the following content:

~/.config/xdg-desktop-portal/hyprland-portals.conf

[preferred]
default = hyprland;gtk
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.FileChooser = kde

You can read more about this in the xdg-desktop-portal documentation in the Arch Wiki. Note that some applications like Firefox may require additional configuration to use the KDE file picker.

Debugging

If you get long app launch times, or screensharing does not work, consult the logs.

systemctl --user status xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland

If you see a crash, it’s likely you are missing either qt6-wayland or qt5-wayland.

If the portal does not autostart, does not function when manually started, and does not produce any error logs, it’s very likely your XDG env variables are messed up

Configuration

Example:

screencopy {
    max_fps = 60
}

Config file ~/.config/hypr/xdph.conf allows for these variables:

category screencopy

variable	description	type	default value
max_fps	Maximum fps of a screensharing session. 0 means no limit.	int	120
allow_token_by_default	If enabled, will tick the “Allow restore token” box by default	bool	false
custom_picker_binary	If non-empty, will use that binary as your share picker. Please note that it has to conform to the stdout selection layout of `hyprland-share-picker`.	bool	false

hyprlock hyprsunset