slack seems to use Xwayland by default

[gammons]

System details

Omarchy HEAD (Oct 3 2025)

What's wrong?

Slack's Electron-based desktop application supports native Wayland rendering, but requires specific command-line flags to enable it. Without these flags, Slack runs through XWayland, which can cause blurry text on HiDPI displays and miss out on native Wayland benefits.

Proposed Change

We might want Omarchy to add Wayland support flags to the Slack desktop entry configuration by modifying the Exec line to include:

• --enable-features=WaylandWindowDecorations - Enables native Wayland window decorations
• --ozone-platform-hint=auto - Automatically selects Wayland when available, falls back to X11

Example Configuration

Create/modify ~/.local/share/applications/slack.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Slack
StartupWMClass=Slack
Comment=Slack Desktop
GenericName=Slack Client for Linux
Exec=/usr/bin/slack --enable-features=WaylandWindowDecorations --ozone-platform-hint=auto --gtk-version=3 -s %U
Icon=slack
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Network;InstantMessaging;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/slack;

Benefits
- Native Wayland rendering (no XWayland translation layer)
- Crisp text rendering on HiDPI displays
- Better performance and lower latency
- Proper Wayland window management

[voody77]

Isn’t it easier to use a webapp for Slack instead of Electron?

[g012]

Isn’t it easier to use a webapp for Slack instead of Electron?

But then you wouldn't have the tray icon option and probably other features right ?

[gammons]

Actually, using --ozone-platform-hint=auto still prefers the X version of slack. using --ozone-platform=wayland is the only way I was able to get the wayland version of Slack working natively with wayland support.

I am noting that omarchy sets ELECTRON_OZONE_PLATFORM_HINT=wayland, but that seems to not have any effect on Slack. it might have an effect on other Electron apps. maybe slack is using an older version of Electron or something like that.

[ckrailo]

The slack-desktop-wayland package has the solutions baked in vs slack-desktop.