nixos/xdg: fails to lauch portals on niri wm

[pneg]

Nixpkgs version

• Unstable (25.05)

Describe the bug

xdg-desktop-portal-gtk fails whenever I log in with "cannot open display" or "Error reading events from display: Broken pipe." If I restart it manually it runs, but I have to restart xdg-desktop-portal-gnome too to get the filepicker, screensharing, etc. to function.

Steps to reproduce

1. Add the following to configuration.nix:

{
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    nautilus # needed for filepicker to function
  ];
  programs.niri.enable = true;
}

2. Launch niri and check the status of xdg-desktop-portal-gtk

Expected behaviour

xdg-desktop-portal-gtk should launch successfully

Screenshots

No response

Relevant log output

Mar 20 01:56:48 pc .xdg-desktop-po[37491]: Error reading events from display: Broken pipe
Mar 20 01:56:48 pc systemd[1641]: xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Mar 20 01:56:48 pc systemd[1641]: xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Mar 20 01:56:48 pc systemd[1641]: xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.service: Consumed 4.076s CPU time, 10.6M memory peak, 7.5M memory swap pe>
Mar 20 01:56:55 pc systemd[1641]: Starting Portal service (GTK/GNOME implementation)...
Mar 20 01:56:55 pc .xdg-desktop-po[178587]: cannot open display: 
Mar 20 01:56:55 pc systemd[1641]: xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Mar 20 01:56:55 pc systemd[1641]: xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Mar 20 01:56:55 pc systemd[1641]: Failed to start Portal service (GTK/GNOME implementation).

Additional context

Similar issue: #386341

System metadata

• system: "x86_64-linux"
• host os: Linux 6.11.11-valve10, NixOS, 25.05 (Warbler), 25.05.20250315.c80f6a7
• multi-user?: yes
• sandbox: yes
• version: nix-env (Nix) 2.24.12
• nixpkgs: /nix/store/alzxn3hjisc84hrlv44x6hni48crww26-source

Notify maintainers

@jtojnar
@sodiboo
@getchoo
@foo-dogsquared
@IogaMaster

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[pneg]

For some reason 10 minutes later it starts fine:

Mar 20 02:05:59 pc systemd[1641]: Starting Portal service (GTK/GNOME implementation)...
Mar 20 02:05:59 pc systemd[1641]: Started Portal service (GTK/GNOME implementation).

[Brisingr05]

Are you starting niri using niri-session?