Suggestion: Add Config Option to Select Wayland/X11 Backend Without Relying on Global Environment Variables

[ffs-akl]

Currently, Audacious relies on global environment variables such as GDK_BACKEND=wayland or QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland to enable native Wayland support. While this works in principle, it introduces a significant usability issue: setting these variables globally can interfere with other GTK or Qt applications that do not support Wayland properly.
Requiring users to manually set global environment variables to switch between X11 and Wayland is no longer appropriate in modern desktop environments. It introduces unnecessary complexity and can interfere with other applications. A more user-friendly and future-proof approach would be to offer backend selection via configuration files, command-line flags, or GUI settings.
I suggest adding a configuration option within Audacious itself—either in the GUI settings or in the config file (e.g., ~/.config/audacious/config)—to explicitly select the graphics backend. For example:
[UI]
gtk-backend=wayland
qt-backend=x11

[jlindgren90]

We do not recommend the use of native Wayland for Audacious. The environment variables are there for developer use only. Just leave them unset and let Audacious use Xwayland please. Anything else is unsupported.

[radioactiveman]

I actually like the idea making this configurable. The Qt and GTK interface work well meanwhile on Wayland. Only the Winamp interface actually requires X11/Xwayland.

We could add a "Use Xwayland" checkbox in the Audacious settings dialog and ask users at runtime to enable it when using the Winamp interface. I will see how this works and prepare a pull request. It would then also fix #1656 as a positive side effect.

[radioactiveman]

This is now implemented with an Xwayland configuration setting, changeable in the UI via the Audacious settings at "Advanced -> Compatiblity -> Use Xwayland". When the Winamp interface is used the setting is enforced automatically.

To be released with Audacious 4.6.

• fc41186
• audacious-media-player/audacious-plugins@50a88eb

[EnduringGuerila]

I guess I didn't use Audacious for longer than I thought... (must have been like 3 months ago)
Global Hotkeys suddenly not working was annoying and actually took me quite a while to figure out I had to enable 'Use Xwayland' in settings...
I am on CachyOS/Wayland, and Audacious just worked out of the box before. I didn't have to do anything for Global Hotkeys to work either.

Could we change the error message to be a little more helpful?
I kept getting two error messages:
"Global Hotkey plugin only supports X11"
but only when I would first try to enable it, then all subsequent error messages would say:
"Global Hotkeys failed to start."

A message mentioning that there is an XWayland option in advanced settings would have been extremely helpful.

This thread also didn't come up when searching Issues. I only found it because I was about to submit something asking for help, which pulled up the Discussions section.