PipeWire

PipeWire is a low-latency, graph-based, processing engine and server, for interfacing with audio and video devices. It can be used to support use-cases currently handled by ALSA, PulseAudio, and/or JACK, and aims to improve handling of audio and video under Linux.

Some key features of PipeWire include:

• Minimal latency capture/playback of audio and video.
• Real-time multimedia processing.
• Multi-process architecture allowing multimedia content sharing between applications.
• Seamless support for PulseAudio, JACK, ALSA, and GStreamer.
• Applications sandboxing support with Flatpak, with a security model that facilitates interacting containerized applications.

Most applications - including e.g. Firefox - don't yet support PipeWire's native API. However, PipeWire can emulate PulseAudio, thus removing the need for a separate PulseAudio sound server. Refer to the "USE flags" section for details.

PipeWire currently ships a PipeWire daemon, an example session manager, tools to introspect and use the PipeWire daemon, a library to develop PipeWire applications and plugins, and the SPA (Simple Plugin API) used by both the PipeWire daemon and the PipeWire library.

PipeWire users will typically need to install and use WirePlumber for session/policy management functionality, such as volume management; refer to that page for details.

Installation

Kernel

Device Drivers --->
 <*> Sound card support Search for <code>CONFIG_SOUND</code> to find this item. --->
 <*> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Search for <code>CONFIG_SND</code> to find this item. --->
 -*- Sound Proc FS Support Search for <code>CONFIG_SND_PROC_FS</code> to find this item.
 [*] Verbose procfs contents Search for <code>CONFIG_SND_VERBOSE_PROCFS</code> to find this item.

Desktop profiles

All desktop profiles now enable PipeWire by default, so no installation should be required.

systemd users need to enable the wireplumber service by following this section.

Non-desktop profiles

USE flags

To use PipeWire as a sound server, specify the sound-server USE flag on media-video/pipewire ^[1] .

Then, if using PipeWire as a replacement for the PulseAudio sound server:

1. Ensure media-sound/pulseaudio-daemon is not installed. This is necessary to avoid issues resulting from running more than one sound server.
2. Ensure media-libs/libpulse is installed, which will allow PipeWire to emulate a PulseAudio sound server. Not many applications currently support PipeWire's native API.
3. Ensure the pulseaudio USE flag is still set globally.

If compiled with the dbus USE flag enabled, PipeWire requires the presence of a D-Bus session bus and an XDG-compliant environment. Both requirements should be met by a desktop profile; on such systems, starting PipeWire is as simple as running the pipewire binary. On other profiles, if using OpenRC, permissions requirements might also need the elogind USE flag on the media-video/wireplumber package, together with elogind itself.

D-Bus is required for Bluetooth support, interacting with RTKit to acquire real-time priorities, and interacting with other multimedia clients.^[2] D-Bus is also used by KDE Plasma to notify PipeWire of volume changes.

To enable direct screencasting support on applications offering it, specify the screencast USE flag on the relevant packages. Otherwise, screencasting support may also be provided through the PulseAudio or JACK compatibility layers.

Emerge

Once the USE flags have been specified, rebuild the affected packages:

Alternatively, PipeWire may be emerged independently, though the previous method is usually what is required:

Configuration

PipeWire recognizes multiple environment variables that allow settings to be changed, either per-user, or for individual commands: for example, PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR, PIPEWIRE_MODULE_DIR, and DISABLE_RTKIT. Refer to the pipewire(1) man page for a complete list.

Audio groups

It's recommended that users are in the pipewire group.

PipeWire's default configuration tries to use realtime scheduling to increase audio thread priorities. If the user doesn't have the necessary permissions for this, the configuration will try to use RealtimeKit (RTKit) instead, such that sys-auth/rtkit will need to be installed. This behavior is defined under the context.modules portion of PipeWire's configuration.

In general, for the best experience with fast user switching, users should not be in the audio group, in order to avoid a user application being able to take exclusive control of the audio device. Exceptions include systems that use seatd or that rely on the audio group for device access control / ACLs.

To remove a user from the audio group:

Sound server configuration

File locations

Use pw-config to output the current configuration paths, and use pw-config list to list the current configuration.

The default configuration should be fine for most users. This configuration is described in /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf.

If customization is required, do not modify that file. Instead, copy it to either or both of:

• /etc/pipewire/, for system-wide configuration; or
• ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/pipewire/, for per-user configuration,

and modify either or both of those files as appropriate.

By default, XDG_CONFIG_HOME is ~/.config/. Refer to the XDG/Base_Directories page for further information.

Configuration fragments

Configuration fragments can be specified via a file with a .conf extension (e.g. 90-local.conf) in the following directories^[3] :

1. /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/
2. /etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/
3. ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/

User services

User services are available for both systemd and OpenRC. Those not using systemd or OpenRC can instead use PipeWire/gentoo-pipewire-launcher.

systemd

PipeWire provides socket and service files when built with the systemd USE flag.

If the PulseAudio user service is enabled, disable it; this is safe to do even if the user service was not in use.

While PipeWire does not appear to utilize the ~/.config/pulse/ directory beyond the cookie file, it may be a good idea to rename or delete it.

Enable the pipewire-pulse socket; enabling the pipewire-pulse socket will cause the pipewire-pulse service to be started if required. That service will in turn start the pipewire service.

Socket activation means the pipewire service will only be started when required, which is usually sufficient. However, the pipewire service can be always started when the user logs in by enabling pipewire.service:

Enable the wireplumber service:

In these cases, the --now flag is optional, but probably safe to use, as starting PipeWire with default configuration merely allows using new interfaces and doesn't change the existing ones, i.e. non-PipeWire clients continue using the same libraries and services they were using previously.

OpenRC

OpenRC has built-in and enabled by default support for user services since version 0.60. Similarly to systemd, they can be used to automatically launch and stop PipeWire on login and logout.

To enable the PipeWire services run:

To start the services without enabling them:

PulseAudio server emulation

To confirm PulseAudio server emulation:

Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.39)

Multi-user support

Multi-user support requires the UNIX socket interface.

If there is not yet a pipewire-pulse.conf file in /etc/pipewire/, add it (creating the /etc/pipewire/ directory if necessary):

Then edit /etc/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf to specify the UNIX socket location, which must match the PulseAudio client configuration:

pulse.properties = {
 server.address = [
 "unix:/tmp/pulse-socket"
 ]
}

Advanced

For information about more advanced PipeWire configuration, refer to the PipeWire/extra page.

Usage

A command-line interface to PipeWire is provided by pw-cli(1) . This tool can be used to e.g. list the IDs of PipeWire nodes:

and to check the current properties of a given node:

Controlling the volume

Ways to control the volume - which on typical setups will be managed by WirePlumber - include:

• media-sound/pwvucontrol , a pavucontrol-like GUI.

• wiremix, a TUI.

• media-sound/pipemixer::guru , a TUI.

• WirePlumber's wpctl(1) command.

• PulseAudio tools such as media-sound/pavucontrol and pactl(1) (provided by media-libs/libpulse ).

• The pw-cli(1) command^[4] , e.g.:

user $pw-cli s <node-id> Props '{ mute: false, channelVolumes: [ 0.3, 0.3 ] }'

Checking settings

pw-metadata can be used to check the current sample rate and other settings:

Found "settings" metadata 31
update: id:0 key:'log.level' value:'2' type:''
update: id:0 key:'clock.rate' value:'192000' type:''
update: id:0 key:'clock.allowed-rates' value:'[ 192000, 48000, 44100 ]' type:''
update: id:0 key:'clock.quantum' value:'1024' type:''
update: id:0 key:'clock.min-quantum' value:'32' type:''
update: id:0 key:'clock.max-quantum' value:'2048' type:''
update: id:0 key:'clock.force-quantum' value:'0' type:''
update: id:0 key:'clock.force-rate' value:'0' type:''

If PipeWire is being used as a PulseAudio backend, the sample rate and bit depth, or Default Sample Specification, can be checked with:

Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native
Library Protocol Version: 35
Server Protocol Version: 35
Is Local: yes
Client Index: 213
Tile Size: 65472
User Name: larry
Host Name: gentoo
Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.71)
Server Version: 15.0.0
Default Sample Specification: float32le 2ch 192000Hz
Default Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Default Sink: alsa_output.usb-Generic_USB_Audio-00.pro-output-2
Default Source: alsa_input.usb-Focusrite_Scarlett_Solo_USB-00.pro-input-0

GUI patchbays

GUI patchbays available via the gentoo repository include:

• media-sound/helvum , a GTK-based patchbay.

• media-sound/qpwgraph , a Qt-based patchbay that can save layout.

Additionally, coppwr is a low-level patchbay available via Flatpak (io.github.dimtpap.coppwr).

Advanced

For information about more advanced PipeWire usage, refer to the PipeWire/extra page.

Replacing JACK

If the jack-sdk USE flag is enabled, PipeWire can be used as the server for JACK clients; calls to the JACK API will be translated into calls to PipeWire's native API. Clients can be connected via a patchbay interface such as qjackctl(1) . Refer to pipewire-jack.conf(5) for information about configuring PipeWire for JACK clients.

When PipeWire is configured this way, the media-sound/jack2 package must be uninstalled; /usr/lib/libjack.so will be owned by the media-video/pipewire package. This can be checked via e.g. qfile (provided by app-portage/portage-utils ) or equery (provided by app-portage/gentoolkit ).

If the jack-sdk USE flag is not enabled, media-sound/jack2 will be installed (and its dbus USE flag must be enabled). In this case, individual JACK clients can be run via pw-jack(1) , e.g. pw-jack qjackctl. When using pw-jack, do not use either jackd(1) nor jackdbus.

Not every client will necessarily work; some may even ungracefully exit due to missing symbols. Re-configuration of JACK clients might be required.

Troubleshooting

Refer to PipeWire/troubleshooting.

See also

• WirePlumber — a modular session / policy manager for PipeWire
• PulseAudio — a multi-platform, open source, sound server that provides a number of features on top of the low-level audio interface ALSA
• ALSA — the Linux kernel's API for sound cards, together with an associated software framework
• Technical notes on the packaging of PipeWire

External resources

• Pipewire Guide
• PipeWire FAQ
• Introduction to Pipewire (2025年02月07日)
• An introduction to PipeWire (2022年06月20日)
• PipeWire under the hood (2021年06月23日) - blog post explaining PipeWire from a unique perspective
• PipeWire: The Linux audio/video bus, on Linux Weekly News (2021年03月02日)
• Desktop Profile to enable PipeWire support (2026年01月15日) - official Gentoo news about pipewire support
• libpipewire-modules(7) - overview of PipeWire modules

References

• Audio
• Multimedia
• Sound devices