v0.4.8

This release expands HDR and color-management support, brings aqueousctl outputs to wlr-randr information parity, improves portrait display layouts, and fixes maximized floating-window behavior.

Highlights

• Added Auto HDR-style SDR highlight expansion on HDR outputs.
• Added native Wine/Proton HDR paths through color-management-v1 version 3.
• Added full output inspection and JSON reporting to aqueousctl.
• Added automatic vertical placement for scrolling layouts on portrait displays.
• Improved packaging, UWSM integration, and release automation.

HDR and color management

• Added configurable HDR peak presets through hdr_level:
  • 100, 400, or 1000 cd/m²
  • "auto" selects the nearest preset using EDID luminance metadata
• Added configurable SDR diffuse white through sdr_white_level.
• Added auto_hdr and auto_hdr_boost output settings.
• Added the per-window hdr_expand rule.
• Added Windows scRGB and Windows BT.2100 descriptions for Wine/Proton HDR clients.
• Corrected target and reference luminance reporting so Proton receives valid HDR headroom.
• Preserved SDR output reporting to prevent false HDR detection.
• Added wlroots patches exposing EDID HDR metadata, SDR white-level rendering, and Windows HDR color-management support.
• Added live tests for color-management luminance and Proton HDR behavior.

Auto HDR requires a build with Vulkan effects enabled.

aqueousctl output reporting

aqueousctl outputs now reports the complete wlr-randr information set:

• Connector name and description
• Manufacturer, model, and serial number
• Physical dimensions
• Enabled state
• Every advertised mode
• Current and preferred modes
• Logical position
• Transform
• Scale
• Adaptive-sync state

Use aqueousctl outputs --json for the same atomic snapshot with wlr-randr-compatible field names and value types.

Window management

• Added prefer_vertical_on_portrait for scrolling layouts. New windows can automatically join the active column when its local usable region is taller than it is wide.
• Fixed minimizing and restoring maximized floating windows.
• Fixed maximized-window stacking in floating layouts so focus order determines which floating window appears on top.
• Expanded fixture and integration coverage for vertical scrolling behavior.

Packaging and session integration

• Updated package versions and release metadata to 0.4.8.
• Updated install and upgrade messages with current configuration, session, shell, and logging information.
• Moved the packaged UWSM environment from /etc/uwsm/env-aqueous to /etc/xdg/uwsm/env-aqueous, where UWSM actually discovers system configuration.
• Corrected environment packaging across standard, Git, Intel, binary, and DMS packages.
• Added the missing xcb-util-renderutil CI dependency.
• Updated release and artifact GitHub Actions.
• Improved CI concurrency and branch filtering.

Auto HDR development tools

Added an Auto HDR training and evaluation stack with:

• Synthetic SDR/HDR pair generation
• Multiple tone-mapping degradation methods
• Gain-map, LUT, and parameter-regression model options
• Training, evaluation, and export tooling
• ROCm acceleration and GPU validation
• Python 3.12 and 3.14 environment support

Upgrade notes

• wayland-protocols 1.49 or newer is now required.
• Restart the complete Aqueous session after upgrading.
• If you maintain a custom system-wide UWSM environment under /etc/uwsm, move it to /etc/xdg/uwsm. Per-user overrides remain supported under ~/.config/uwsm.
• Existing Aqueous configuration files remain compatible; all new HDR and portrait-layout options are optional.

What's Changed

• Improve clientMinimizeAllowed gate and fix z_order for maximized layout by @azdanov in #37

New Contributors

• @azdanov made their first contribution in #37

Full Changelog: 0.4.7...v0.4.8