HDR broken in fullscreen games since 0.54 update

[Ylaaan]

Hello, I just upgraded to 0.54. My HDR games used to be displayed just fine, but now they are looking hyper saturated in HDR anytime the game is fullscreened. I managed to reproduce the issue in all my fullscreened games. Fullscreening a game also makes it so that anytime I press my SUPER or ESCAPE key, the screen goes black for a second or so, just like I when my hyprland configuration gets reloaded.

I have seen someone mention HDR being broken since 0.54 in #13014 but the issue encountered seems different so I am making a separate discussion for it

[Ylaaan]

My current monitor configurations is this :

monitorv2 {
	output = desc:AOC Q27G3XMN 1APR1JA000992
	mode = preferred
	position = auto-right
	scale = 1
	transform = 0
	bitdepth = 10
	cm = hdr
	sdrbrightness = 1.4
	sdrsaturation = 1.4
	vrr = 0
	supports_hdr = 1
	sdr_min_luminance = 0.005
	sdr_max_luminance = 75
	min_luminance = 0.02
	max_luminance = 1000
	max_avg_luminance = 750
    supports_wide_color = 1
}

Output of hyprctl systeminfo

[Ylaaan]

installing glaze did fix the building issues for me too, I will try to bisect too to see if it land on the same commit

[Ylaaan]

Alright, after a bit of struggling on my end this is what i get when bisecting :

9f9dbb0dc54e76ef7d9dd6da8961e9ca1d4ac0ec is the first bad commit
commit 9f9dbb0dc54e76ef7d9dd6da8961e9ca1d4ac0ec
Author: UjinT34 <41110182+UjinT34@users.noreply.github.com>
Date:   Sat Feb 7 15:38:01 2026 +0300

    renderer: allow tearing with DS with invisible cursors (#13155)

 src/debug/HyprCtl.cpp           | 17 ++++++++---------
 src/helpers/Monitor.cpp         | 12 +++++-------
 src/helpers/Monitor.hpp         |  8 ++++----
 src/managers/PointerManager.cpp | 11 +++++++++--
 src/managers/PointerManager.hpp |  1 +
 5 files changed, 27 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)

[Ylaaan]

I had to skip quite a few commits to get this, so i'm a bit unsure, i might try to double check tomorrow if i find time

[UjinT34]

If the issue is caused by #13155 then it can be solved by render:direct_scanout=0 meaning that DS wasn't actually working prior to that PR. If not then a config and steps to reproduce are needed to investigate it. If this happens with gamescope then provide a WAYLAND_DEBUG=1 log from the gamescope itself (not the actual game inside it) please.

[Ylaaan]

I can confirm that this solves it, i had direct scanout set to true to resolve a problem i had a while ago but I cannot remember what

[ssareta]

Can you try render:non_shader_cm = 2 (or other various options for it)? Also, render:cm_fs_passthrough = 0?

[Ylaaan]

This also solves the issue even with direct scannout left on, although i don't have an good understanding of what either of those options do

[ssareta]

Me neither lmao. But AFAIK (I could be totally off base, but this is my understanding based on code review), with direct scanout on, and non_shader_cm = 2, you are allowing the surface's settings/metadata to be passed directly to your monitor, which if the game has correct HDR settings/output and your monitor can handle displaying the image properly (is in the correct HDR mode etc), will look correct.

But non_shader_cm = 3 (the default) will not let any colour management happen without a shader, and moreover, it ignores any CM issues that happen as a result of this policy. Direct scanout is one of the scenarios in which issues happen; you can't directly scanout if you need a shader to do anything to the surface before passing it to the display (since, you know, it's not "directly" scanning out anymore in that case), so disallowing CM without shaders but allowing direct scanout means your colours will be borked.

Hence the fix; either change the policy to allow non-shader CM while directly scanning out, or disable direct scanout.

[UjinT34]

render:non_shader_cm = 2 blocks DS when CM can't be done without shaders. It also enables drm properties to handle CM when shader path isn't available. Those properties don't work well with hyprsunset and similar stuff. So the default is to ignore any CM issues with DS since it worked that way prior to render:non_shader_cm PR.