Noticeably worse input latency on native Wayland compared to X11

[auroraongithub]

Type

Performance

Bug description

note: X11 is slowly getting deprecated by many DEs and distributions, please give this some thought before saying "wayland bad" (even if it is)

As a top player, osu! lazer on native Wayland appears to have noticeably higher input latency (this has also been confirmed by another tester on Wayland) compared to X11.

Steps to reproduce

1. Launch osu! lazer with:
   SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland ./osu.AppImage
   // note: this is optional, the input latency is present with or without it
2. Compare cursor responsiveness to X11.

Observed behavior
On native Wayland:

• Noticeable input lag compared to X11
• Not as snappy compared to X11 input
• Less stable FPS and MS, hovering around 910-990FPS, often going to 1.1-1.3ms
  On X11:
• Feels snappier and more responsive
• Better frame stability during gameplay, stable 1000FPS and 1.0ms

Additional context

• SDL3 (OSU_SDL3=1) with Wayland does not resolve the issue
• The game runs via XWayland by default (proven by how xprop works on it)
• SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland to enable native Wayland was attempted but does not solve the issue
• osu! appears to lack full native Wayland support, falling back to XWayland unless explicitly forced

Questions

1. Is this a known limitation of osu's Wayland support?
2. Is there a way or fix to achieve X11-like input latency on Wayland?
3. Would proper native Wayland integration help fix the issue, or is this an inherent Wayland limitation?

Screenshots or videos

No response

Version

2026.406.0-Lazer

Logs

compressed-logs-peeb.zip
compressed-logs-aurora.zip

[Walavouchey]

are you able to show the frame time graphs for stable and lazer? (ctrl+f11 in stable, ctrl+f11 twice in lazer)

have you tried

• disabling tearing prevention/adaptive sync on your monitor/compositor's settings
• using different renderers

i would note that lazer works with wayland and sdl3 very smoothly for me, so this is definitely not a universal issue

[auroraongithub]

uhhh how do i go about doing that? record a clip with frametime graphs on both x11 and wayland? i dont have stable here on my linux install

additionally:
yes i have tried disabling those two to no avail
using vulkan is very broken since playing a map just crashes the game completely after the map finishes loading

i should note though, the game runs fine as it is, and the input latency im mentioning is probably nothing to 99% of players, but as a top player its quite noticable

[Walavouchey]

if you don't have stable then skip that part i guess

the frame time graph tells a lot more than the logs do. the ms in the "fps" counter is just 1000 / fps, not frame time. the graph shows frame times per thread and what is causing latency (if it's something in the game or outside of it)

if i assume that the 910 vs 1000 fps difference is the only issue you're seeing, that's not enough to explain any perceivable end-to-end latency difference

[sineplusx]

Can you go into more detail about the compositor / DE you use? I play on KDE Wayland and never felt any measurable difference compared to X11. KWin can also do screen tearing if you want the same feeling as X11 (which had imho insufferable VSync)

[XeZey]

playing on arch vanilla + kde vanilla. on opengl, the game has really bad stutters/tears, regadless of frame limiters.
on vulkan, the game is crispy smooth on unlimited fps, but it has some tearing artifacts on lower limits, which are very different from opengl. i do game on amd though i dont know if vulkan is viable on nvidia. another thing: single and multithreading generally give different results, so maybe try that. i was mindblown at first that vulkan is as smooth as it is, its not even remotely comparable. im guessing it has to do with with how it handles screen tearing differently. a year ago vulkan was also unplayable for me, and now ive only gotten 1 crash in the last 20 hours or so, so its definitely coming along

[trustytrojan]

do you not know about wayland's screen tearing protocol? try to enable it in your compositor/de

[Redapple-one]

Turning it on won't help.

[trustytrojan]

works for me on sway 🤷‍♂️ i can clearly feel the difference when it is on/off
have you read the documentation on it for your compositor?

[Redapple-one]

It doesn't make much of a difference. X11 still has better latency.
(I use KWin)

[Redapple-one]

This might be an OpenTabletDriver issue. I noticed it feels more laggy on Wayland than it does on X11.

[Hirxsawa]

I think this is a Wayland issue tbh, I feel worse input lag on every game no matter what. X11 or XLibre are better.