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PipeWire

PipeWire is a server and user space API to deal with multimedia pipelines. This includes:

  • Making available sources of video (such as from a capture devices or application provided streams) and multiplexing this with clients.
  • Accessing sources of video for consumption.
  • Generating graphs for audio and video processing.

Nodes

  • Nodes in the graph can be implemented as separate processes, communicating with sockets and exchanging multimedia content using fd passing.

Basic Chart

Building and Installation

  • The preferred way to install PipeWire is to install it with your distribution package system. This ensures PipeWire is integrated into the rest of your system for the best experience.

  • If you want to build and install PipeWire yourself, refer to install for instructions.

Usage⚓︎

Usage

  • The most important purpose of PipeWire is to run your favorite apps.

  • Some applications use the native PipeWire API, such as most compositors (gnome-shell, wayland, ...) to implement screen sharing. These apps will just work automatically.

  • Most audio applications can use either ALSA, JACK or PulseAudio as a backend. PipeWire provides support for all 3 backends. Depending on how your distribution has configured things this should just work automatically or with the provided scripts shown below.

PipeWire can use environment variables to control the behaviour of applications:

  • PIPEWIRE_DEBUG=<level> to increase the debug level (or use one of XEWIDT for none, error, warnings, info, debug, or trace, respectively).
  • PIPEWIRE_LOG=<filename> to redirect log to filename
  • PIPEWIRE_LOG_SYSTEMD=false to disable logging to systemd journal
  • PIPEWIRE_LATENCY=<num/denom> to configure latency as a fraction. 10/1000 configures a 10ms latency. Usually this is expressed as a fraction of the samplerate, like 256/48000, which uses 256 samples at a samplerate of 48KHz for a latency of 5.33ms. This function does not attempt to configure the samplerate.
  • PIPEWIRE_RATE=<num/denom> to configure a rate for the graph.
  • PIPEWIRE_QUANTUM=<num/denom> to configure latency as a fraction and a samplerate. This function will force the graph samplerate to denom and force the specified num as the buffer size.
  • PIPEWIRE_NODE=<id> to request a link to the specified node. The id can be a node.name or object.serial of the target node.

Using Tools⚓︎

Using tools

pw-cat can be used to play and record audio and midi. Use pw-cat -h to get some more help. There are some aliases like pw-play and pw-record to make things easier:

\$ pw-play /home/wim/data/01.\ Firepower.wav

Running JACK Applications⚓︎

Running JACK applications

Depending on how the system was configured, you can either run PipeWire and JACK side-by-side or have PipeWire take over the functionality of JACK completely.

In dual mode, JACK apps will by default use the JACK server. To direct a JACK app to PipeWire, you can use the pw-jack script like this:

\$ pw-jack <appname>

If you replaced JACK with PipeWire completely, pw-jack does not have any effect and can be omitted.

JACK applications will automatically use the buffer-size chosen by the server. You can force a maximum buffer size (latency) by setting the PIPEWIRE_LATENCY environment variable like so:

PIPEWIRE_LATENCY=128/48000 jack_simple_client

Requests the jack_simple_client to run with a buffer of 128 or less samples.

Running PulseAudio Applications⚓︎

Running PulseAudio Applications

PipeWire can run a PulseAudio compatible replacement server. You can't use both servers at the same time. Usually your package manager will make the server conflict so that you can only install one or the other.

PulseAudio applications still use the regular PulseAudio client libraries and you don't need to do anything else than change the server implementation.

A successful swap of the server can be verified by checking the output of:

pactl info

It should include the string:

Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.x)

You can use pavucontrol to change profiles and ports, change volumes or redirect streams, just like with PulseAudio.

Running ALSA Applications⚓︎

Running ALSA Applications

If the PipeWire alsa module is installed, it can be seen with

\$ aplay -L

ALSA applications can then use the pipewire: device to use PipeWire as the audio system.

Running GStreamer Applications⚓︎

Running GStreamer Applications

PipeWire includes 2 GStreamer elements called pipewiresrc and
pipewiresink. They can be used in pipelines such as this:

\$ gst-launch-1.0 pipewiresrc ! videoconvert ! autovideosink

Or to play a beeping sound:

\$ gst-launch-1.0 audiotestsrc ! pipewiresink

PipeWire provides a device monitor as well so that

\$ gst-device-monitor-1.0

Shows the PipeWire devices and applications like cheese will automatically use the PipeWire video source when possible.

Helvum

Helvum is a GTK-based patchbay for pipewire, inspired by the JACK tool catia.

Project Status

Helvum is currently not actively maintained. If you are interested in maintaining the project, please see project

Flathub Badge

Repology Badge

Features Planned

  • Volume control
  • "Debug mode" that lets you view advanced information for nodes and ports

More suggestions are welcome!

Building

Via Flatpak:

If you don't have the flathub repo in your remote-list for flatpak you will need to add that first:

\$ flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Then install the required flatpak platform and SDK, if you dont have them already:

\$ flatpak install org.gnome.{Platform,Sdk}//45 org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.rust-stable//23.08 org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.llvm16//23.08

To compile and install as a flatpak, clone the project, change to the project directory, and run:

\$ flatpak-builder --install flatpak-build/ build-aux/org.pipewire.Helvum.json

You can then run the app via:

\$ flatpak run org.pipewire.Helvum

Manually

For compilation, you will need:

  • Meson
  • An up-to-date rust toolchain
  • libclang-3.7 or higher
  • libadwaita-1 and libpipewire-0.3 development packages and their dependencies

To compile and install, run:

\$ meson setup build && cd build
\$ meson compile
\$ meson install

In the repository root.

This will install the compiled project files into /usr/local.

License and Credits

Helvum is distributed under the terms of the GPL3 license.
See LICENSE for more information.

Parts of the build system were taken from the gtk-rust-template project, which is provided under the terms of the MIT license.

Inspecting the PipeWire State⚓︎

Inspecting the PipeWire State

To inspect and manipulate the PipeWire graph via GUI, you can use Helvum.

  • Alternatively, you can use use one of the excellent JACK tools, such as Carla, catia, qjackctl, ...
  • However, you will not be able to see all features like the video ports.
  • pw-mon dumps and monitors the state of the PipeWire daemon.
  • pw-dot can dump a graph of the pipeline, check out the help for how to do this.
  • pw-top monitors the real-time status of the graph. This is handy to find out what clients are running and how much DSP resources they use.
  • pw-dump dumps the state of the PipeWire daemon in JSON format. This can be used to find out the properties and parameters of the objects in the PipeWire daemon.

There is a more complicated tool to inspect the state of the server with pw-cli. This tool can be used interactively or it can execute single commands like this to get the server information:

\$ pw-cli info 0

Documentation⚓︎

Documentation

  • Find tutorials and design documentation here.
  • The (incomplete) autogenerated API docs are here.
  • The Wiki can be found here

Contributing⚓︎

Contributing

  • PipeWire is Free Software and is developed in the open. It is mostly licensed under the MIT license. Check LICENSE for more details about the exceptions.
  • Contributors are encouraged to submit merge requests or file bugs on gitlab.
  • Join us on IRC at #pipewire on OFTC.
  • We adhere to the Contributor Covenant for our code of conduct.
  • Donate using Liberapay.

Getting help⚓︎

Getting Help

  • You can ask for help on the IRC channel (see above).
  • You can also ask questions by raising a gitlab issue.

Building⚓︎

Building

PipeWire uses a build tool called Meson as a basis for its build process. It's a tool with some resemblance to Autotools and CMake. Meson again generates build files for a lower level build tool called Ninja, working in about the same level of abstraction as more familiar GNU Make does.

Meson uses a user-specified build directory and all files produced by Meson are in that build directory. This build directory will be called builddir in this document.

Generate the build files for Ninja:

\$ meson setup builddir

For distribution-specific build dependencies, please check our CI pipeline(search for FDO_DISTRIBUTION_PACKAGES). Note that some dependencies are optional and depend on options passed to meson.

Once this is done, the next step is to review the build options:

\$ meson configure builddir

Define the installation prefix:

\$ meson configure builddir -Dprefix=/usr # Default: /usr/local

PipeWire specific build options are listed in the "Project options" section. They are defined in meson_options.txt.

Finally, invoke the build:

\$ meson compile -C builddir

Just to avoid any confusion: autogen.sh is a script invoked by Jhbuild, which orchestrates multi-component builds.

Running⚓︎

Running

If you want to run PipeWire without installing it on your system, there is a script that you can run. This puts you in an environment in which PipeWire can be run from the build directory, and ALSA, PulseAudio and JACK applications will use the PipeWire emulation libraries automatically in this environment. You can get into this environment with:

\$ ./pw-uninstalled.sh -b builddir

In most cases you would want to run the default pipewire daemon. Look below for how to make this daemon start automatically using systemd. If you want to run pipewire from the build directory, you can do this by doing:

cd builddir/
make run

This will use the default config file to configure and start the daemon. The default config will also start pipewire-media-session, a default example media session and pipewire-pulse, a PulseAudio compatible server.

You can also enable more debugging with the PIPEWIRE_DEBUG and WIREPLUMBER_DEBUG environment variables like so:

cd builddir/
PIPEWIRE_DEBUG="D" WIREPLUMBER_DEBUG="D" make run

You might have to stop the pipewire service/socket that might have been started already, with:

systemctl --user stop pipewire.service \
                      pipewire.socket \
                      pipewire-media-session.service \
                      pipewire-pulse.service \
                      pipewire-pulse.socket

Installing⚓︎

Installing

PipeWire comes with quite a bit of libraries and tools, run:

meson install -C builddir
  • To install everything onto the system into the specified prefix. Depending on the configured installation prefix, the above command may need to be run with elevated privileges (e.g. with sudo).
  • Some additional steps will have to be performed to integrate with the distribution as shown below.

PipeWire Daemon⚓︎

PipeWire Daemon

  • A correctly installed PipeWire system should have a pipewire process, a pipewire-media-session (or alternative) and an (optional) pipewire-pulse process running. PipeWire is usually started as a systemd unit using socket activation or as a service.
  • Configuration of the PipeWire daemon can be found in /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf. Please refer to the comments in the config file for more information about the configuration options.

The daemon is started with:

systemctl --user start pipewire.service pipewire.socket

If you did not start the media-session in pipewire.conf, you will also need to start it like this:

systemctl --user start pipewire-media-session.service

To make it start on system startup:

systemctl --user enable pipewire-media-session.service

You can write enable --now to start service immediately.

ALSA Plugin⚓︎

ALSA Plugin

The ALSA plugin is usually installed in:

On Fedora:

/usr/lib64/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_pipewire.so

On Ubuntu:

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_pipewire.so

There is also a config file installed in:

/usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/50-pipewire.conf

The plugin will be picked up by alsa when the following files are in /etc/alsa/conf.d/:

/etc/alsa/conf.d/50-pipewire.conf -> /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/50-pipewire.conf
/etc/alsa/conf.d/99-pipewire-default.conf

With this setup, aplay -l should list a pipewire device that can be used as a regular alsa device for playback and record.

JACK Emulation⚓︎

JACK Emulation

PipeWire reimplements the 3 libraries that JACK applications use to make them run on top of PipeWire.

These libraries are found here:

/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjacknet.so -> libjacknet.so.0
/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjacknet.so.0 -> libjacknet.so.0.304.0
/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjacknet.so.0.304.0
/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjackserver.so -> libjackserver.so.0
/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjackserver.so.0 -> libjackserver.so.0.304.0
/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjackserver.so.0.304.0
/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjack.so -> libjack.so.0
/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjack.so.0 -> libjack.so.0.304.0
/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjack.so.0.304.0

The provided pw-jack script uses LD_LIBRARY_PATH to set the library search path to these replacement libraries. This allows you to run jack apps on both the real JACK server or on PipeWire with the script.

It is also possible to completely replace the JACK libraries by adding a file pipewire-jack-x86_64.conf to /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ with contents like:

/usr/lib64/pipewire-0.3/jack/

Note that when JACK is replaced by PipeWire, the SPA JACK plugin (installed in /usr/lib64/spa-0.2/jack/libspa-jack.so) is not useful anymore and distributions should make them conflict.

PulseAudio Replacement⚓︎

PulseAudio Replacement

PipeWire reimplements the PulseAudio server protocol as a small service that runs on top of PipeWire.

The binary is normally placed here:

/usr/bin/pipewire-pulse

The server can be started with provided systemd activation files or from PipeWire itself. (See /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf)

systemctl --user start pipewire-pulse.service pipewire-pulse.socket

You can also start additional PulseAudio servers listening on other sockets with the -a option. See pipewire-pulse -h for more info.

Uninstalling⚓︎

Uninstalling

To uninstall, run:

ninja -C builddir uninstall
  • Depending on the configured installation prefix, the above command may need to be run with elevated privileges (e.g. with sudo).
  • Note that at the time of writing uninstallation only works with the same build directory that was used for installation.
  • Meson stores the list of installed files in the build directory, and this list is necessary for uninstallation to work.
Name License Website Description
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fre:ac GPL here fre:ac is a free audio converter and CD ripper with support for various popular formats and encoders. Plus supports the CDDB/freedb online CD database which allows you query song information.
name license website description
abcde gpl here a command-line based ripper with cdparanoia functionality
cdparanoia bsd, gpl here one of the first secure standalone rippers for the linux platform
grip gpl here an open-source gnome interface ripper that uses cdparanoia functionality
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Whipper gpl here a secure ripper for the linux command-line built on cdparanoia