Jay 1.14.0

Fixes

As always, this release contains many bug fixes. Thanks to the following people
for reporting or fixing bugs:

• @effects3d
• @jfrob
• @khyperia
• @kotarac
• @krakow10
• @Ktrompfl
• @Nojike
• @polycatenane
• @Stoppedpuma

Every Frame is Perfect

Wayland allows compositors and clients to coordinate changes such that every
frame is perfect. For example, when resizing two tiles, the transition can be
coordinated so that each window fills its respective tile at all times.

Until now, Jay did not make use of this. When resizing a window from the left,
the right side of the window might disappear below the border or might appear
detached from the border.

bad.mp4

Jay will now try to make every frame perfect. This is accomplished by delaying
changes on screen until all affected clients have also updated themselves. A
timeout is used so that a slow client does not cause the entire system to lag.

good.mp4

The default timeout is 50 milliseconds, which is ambitious. Sway uses a timeout
of 200 milliseconds and niri uses a timeout of 300 milliseconds.

The timeout can be adjusted in the config and in the control center:

[transactions]
timeout.millis = 200

Note that transactions only affect what is displayed on screen. The cursor
interacts with the actual state, which might be newer. The timeout determines
the maximum input lag of this mechanism, so to speak. In most cases applications
will respond far sooner than the timeout and the difference will be
imperceptible.

Setting the timeout to 0 will give you the previous behavior of Jay, except that
in some rare situations a change might be delayed by one frame where it
previously wouldn't have been.

Improved Prime Handling

On multi-GPU systems, Jay will now always ensure that buffers rendered on
secondary GPUs are copied to the primary GPU before they are used by the
compositor. This ensures that such copies are not performed implicitly when
rendering, which would increase whole-system latency.

As a side effect, this means that it is now possible to seamlessly switch the
primary GPU at runtime. Previously, this often required applications to be
restarted. For example, on a gaming laptop, you might want to normally run on
the integrated GPU to save energy. But while gaming, you might want to run on
the dedicated GPU instead, to reduce latency.

For clients using version 6 of the wayland dmabuf protocol, Jay is also able to
perform the following optimization: If an application runs on a secondary GPU
and is being scanned out on a display connected to the secondary GPU, Jay will
skip the copy to the primary GPU. This can significantly improve the performance
of such applications. Note that mesa does not yet support version 6 of the
protocol.

All of this can be disabled by setting the environment variable
JAY_NO_CLIENT_PRIME=1 before starting Jay.

Repeating and Locked Shortcuts

Shortcuts can now be configured to repeat:

[complex-shortcuts]
XF86AudioRaiseVolume = {
    action.type = "exec",
    action.exec.shell = "pactl set-sink-volume 0 +10%",
    repeat = true,
}

A repeating shortcut fires according to the configured repeat rate and delay.

Setting allow-locked = true allows a shortcut to execute while the screen is
locked. Care must be taken to not apply this to shortcuts that would allow one
to circumvent the lock screen.

Thanks to @GK-Gaming for suggesting this.

Auto Floating of Fixed-Size Windows

When a client hints that a native wayland window is fixed-size, it will now
automatically be mapped floating instead of tiled. This behavior can be
overridden with window rules.

This can improve the handling of some windows such as splash screens. If you
encounter a window where this behavior is incorrect, please open an issue.

Furthermore, when mapping a floating window, the size will now be adjusted to
fall within the min/max size hinted by the client. The user can still resize the
window to any size.

Thanks to @effects3d for suggesting this.

Focused Border Color

Containers can now be configured to have borders drawn around them:

[theme]
container-borders = "full"

When this setting is active, focused windows can be given a dedicated border
color:

[theme]
focused-border-color = "#840"

This makes it possible to see which window has the focus when window titles are
disabled.

Thanks to @Stoppedpuma for suggesting this.

Scroll Methods

The libinput scroll method of pointer devices can now be configured:

[[inputs]]
match.is-pointer = true
scroll-method = "on-button-down"
scroll-button = "BTN_MIDDLE"

This does not affect scroll wheels but rather devices where pointer movements
and scroll events are generated via the same input surface. For example, if the
configuration above were applied to a touchpad, it would generate scroll events
instead of relative motion events while the middle mouse button is pressed.

In the control center, the possible scroll-button values are visible via a
dropdown menu.

Thanks to @GK-Gaming for suggesting this.

Scaling with Nearest Filtering

Outputs can now be configured to use nearest filtering instead of linear
filtering:

[[outputs]]
match.serial-number = "ETW1M02062SL0"
scale = 2.0
scaling-filter = "nearest"

This produces a clearer picture when the scaling factor is an integer.

This should only affect applications running via Xwayland. Native wayland
applications should scale themselves.

Thanks to @David-Isenah for suggesting this.

Setting Initial Workspace Outputs

When creating new workspaces implicitly, such as by executing a
move-to-workspace action, the workspace would previously always be created on
the fallback output. Workspaces can now be configured ahead of time to be
created on a specific output:

[workspaces."1"]
initial-output.name = "left"

[workspaces."2"]
initial-output.name = "right"

Thanks to @Stoppedpuma for suggesting this.

Toml Improvements

The following improvements expose existing settings via the toml config.

Applying Device Configuration Every Time

The toml config now has a setting to apply device configurations on reload:

device-config-filter = "all"

By default, configuration changes are not applied to existing devices so as not
to overwrite changes made via the command line or the control center.

Thanks to @Stoppedpuma for suggesting this.

Disabling Input Devices

Input devices can now be disabled from the toml config:

[[inputs]]
match.name = "Sony Interactive Entertainment Wireless Controller Touchpad"
detached = true

Thanks to @ArthurHeymans for suggesting this.

Configuring the Cursor Size

The cursor size can now be configured via the toml config:

cursor-size = 30

This only affects cursors rendered by the compositor.

Thanks to @GK-Gaming for suggesting this.

Visualizing Compositing

Sometimes it is useful to know if direct scanout is active or inactive, for
example, to diagnose performance issues. Jay can now display a watermark on
screen while it is compositing; the watermark disappears automatically when
direct scanout is active:

[shortcuts]
alt-x = "toggle-visualize-compositing"

Upholding the graphical-session.target

Jay will now ensure that the systemd graphical-session.target is active while
it is running. This works around a recent regression in xdg-desktop-portal that
otherwise prevents screencasts and similar features from working under most
compositors.

Thanks to @krakow10 for reporting this.

Jay Environment Variables

Jay reads a number of environment variables at startup to configure itself.
These variables are now documented in the book in the Env Variables Read by
Jay section.

dlopen() Metadata

The Jay executable now contains dlopen metadata that can be used by packagers
to determine which libraries Jay will try to load at runtime and for which
purpose:

~$ systemd-analyze dlopen-metadata $(which jay)
FEATURE DESCRIPTION                      SONAME          PRIORITY
sqlite  required for session management  libsqlite3.so.0 recommended
opengl  required for the opengl renderer libGLESv2.so.2  recommended
opengl  required for the opengl renderer libEGL.so.1     recommended
vulkan  required for the vulkan renderer libvulkan.so.1  recommended

Windows BT.2100 Color Descriptions

Jay now supports version 3 of the color management protocol and BT.2100 color
descriptions used by Wine.

Protocol Updates and Additions

This version of Jay supports the following new and improved protocols:

Global	Old	New
wl_seat	10	11
wp_color_manager_v1	2	3
zwp_linux_dmabuf_v1	5	6