[BUG] Switching from `swww` to `awww` breaks wallpapers.

[mrjxtr]

Previously: suspected that updating python-anyio from 4.12.1-1 to 4.13.0-1 breaks wallpaper ❌️

Confirmed bug: switching from swww to awww. ✅️

When updating my system, I missed the prompt that ask me if I would like to replace swww with extra/awww.
When I did, it broke my wallpapers. see my comment below

Describe the bug

UPDATED ONE PACKAGE TODAY (2026-03-25):

RESULT (WALLAPERS ARE BROKEN):

FIX:

Still looking for fix.

What I tried so far (did not work):

yay -S --rebuild python-anyio
yay -S --rebuild waypaper

Steps to reproduce

update system with yay -Syu or pacman -Syu

Expected behavior

Everything should work fine

Screenshots

No response

Distribution

Arch Linux

If Other, specify

No response

Additional context

No response

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[mrjxtr]

UPDATE 1/2: I FIGURED OUT THAT IT BROKE SWWW SPECIFICALLY

Restored my system with timeshift and noticed that I do not have swww on my waypaper when trying to select is a waypapers backend. for some reason updating python-anyio broke that?

other info: swww is now renamed to awww

UPDATE 2/2: I TRIED TO UPDATES EVERYTHING BUT EXCLUDE python-anyio and got this prompt:

This might be the cause of the issue...

[nhasian]

Arch Linux replaced swww with extra/awww today. When I saw it wanted to do that, I came here to see if it would break anything. I think I'll wait for ML4W to switch out the dependency.

[mrjxtr]

Arch Linux replaced swww with extra/awww today. When I saw it wanted to do that, I came here to see if it would break anything. I think I'll wait for ML4W to switch out the dependency.

Yeah, mentioned it on my update 2/2 above. I am still not sure if its an python-anyio issue or if its this swww to extra/awww that is causing the issue (most probably is).

edit: I will try to update python-anyio without changing to awww to see if it doesn't brake anything... this will confirm that the issue is purely with awww

[mrjxtr]

@nhasian @mylinuxforwork

CONFIRMED:

• There is nothing wrong with python-anyio so for the people that will see this, it's safe to update...
• BUT DO NOT replace swww with awww. it will break your wallpapers.

awww-daemon is broken, waypaper does not recognize it as a backend.

[mylinuxforwork]

Thanks a lot for testing. I will try to add awww as soon as possible. The wallpaper function currently relies on waypaper. Need to check if waypaper supports awww now.

[mylinuxforwork]

@mrjxtr Can you help me testing? Can you install awww and remove swww.
Then open waypaper again and select awww as the wallpaper engine? In your screenshot you’re still on hyprpaper.

[mrjxtr]

@mrjxtr Can you help me testing? Can you install awww and remove swww.
Then open waypaper again and select awww as the wallpaper engine? In your screenshot you’re still on hyprpaper.

I already did that earlier... awww does not show up as an option in waypaper. It's only "hyprpaper" or "none"...

And when I manually run awww-daemon it errors along the lines of "~/.cache/awww" does not exist or is not a directory... but when you run ls ~/.cache it's literally there.

I also tried to manually edit the waypaper conf, but it just reverts back to hyprpaper

[AlbinZhu]

I tried changing Waypaper's backend to awww, and it works, but we need to manually start the awww-daemon.

[mrjxtr]

I tried changing Waypaper's backend to awww, and it works, but we need to manually start the awww-daemon.

Sadly wasn't able to manually start it... it only game me errors

[matsondawson]

To tide people over until the update just run this to bring back swww.
You should also add swww to the pacman ignore list to prevent it being deleted.

sudo pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/swww-0.11.2-1.1-x86_64_v4.pkg.tar.zst  

[mylinuxforwork]

To tide people over until the update just run this to bring back swww. You should also add swww to the pacman ignore list to prevent it being deleted.

sudo pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/swww-0.11.2-1.1-x86_64_v4.pkg.tar.zst  

This isn't working on my system. I guess I need to download swww first?