pipewire

PipeWire saw itself as a powerful contender to replace PulseAudio.

Installing PipeWire

If you want to take the plunge and install PipeWire on your system, you first have to make sure you’re not already running it!

Type pactl info into a terminal and see what it gives you under “Server Name.” If it gives you “on PipeWire” in parentheses, you’re already running PipeWire.

yanboyang713@Meta-Scientific-Linux ~ % pactl info
Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native
Library Protocol Version: 35
Server Protocol Version: 35
Is Local: yes
Client Index: 85
Tile Size: 65472
User Name: yanboyang713
Host Name: Meta-Scientific-Linux
Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.82)
Server Version: 15.0.0
Default Sample Specification: float32le 2ch 48000Hz
Default Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Default Sink: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo
Default Source: alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo
Cookie: 0380:3b9d

If the terminal only shows you “PulseAudio” without anything following it, your system isn’t running PipeWire.

Installing The Service

Every PipeWire installation starts with the base service. There’s a chance this may have already been installed with your distro, but just in case it isn’t, you can install it with the following commands.

On Arch-based systems:

sudo pacman -S pipewire pipewire-alsa

Installing The Session Manager

PipeWire doesn’t have its own connection logic, so you have to install a session manager. WirePlumber is one that offers more granular configuration as well as extra plugins that can enhance your experience:

On Arch-based systems:

sudo pacman -S wireplumber

If you prefer a simpler version or your distro’s official repositories don’t have WirePlumber, you can simply install PipeWire Media Session:

On Arch-based systems:

sudo pacman -S pipewire-media-session

Installing The PulseAudio Daemon

Since a large proportion of your system’s applications still send out calls to PulseAudio, if you want your audio to work properly, you’ll have to install PipeWire’s daemon that listens for PulseAudio stuff.

On Arch-based systems:

sudo pacman -S pipewire-pulse

Removing Traces of PulseAudio

If you had to confirm the removal of PulseAudio because of a conflict with something else you were installing during this process (usually pipewire-pulse), then you can skip this step.

Otherwise, it’s important now to remove PulseAudio from your system so that it doesn’t try to query it.

On Arch-based systems:

sudo pacman -Rns pulseaudio

Getting Services Ready

With all the packages you’ve installed and uninstalled, it is time to get PipeWire up and running.

First, remove remnants of pulseaudio’s services:

systemctl --user --now disable pulseaudio.service pulseaudio.socket
systemctl --user mask pulseaudio

Enable PipeWire’s services. If you installed WirePlumber:

systemctl --user --now enable pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber

If you installed PipeWire Media Session, use:

systemctl --user --now enable pipewire pipewire-pulse pipewire-media-session

PipeWire should now work perfectly after you reboot your system!

GUI

qpwgraph — Qt-based Graph/Patchbay for PipeWire, inspired by the JACK tool QjackCtl. Saves wire sets.

paru -S qpwgraph

Configuration

The PipeWire package provides an initial set of configuration files in usr/share/pipewire. You should not edit these files directly, as package updates will overwrite your changes. To configure PipeWire, you can copy files from /usr/share/pipewire to the alternate system-wide location /etc/pipewire, or to the user location ~.config/pipewire. An equally named file in a directory with a higher precedence makes the analogous files ignored.

Settings

keyboard volume control for Hyprland or others

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/WirePlumber#Keyboard_volume_control pw-volume

Simultaneous output

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1379376/how-to-achieve-automated-simultaneous-outputs-with-pipewire

Run:

pactl load-module module-combine-sink

permanent: copying usr/share/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf to ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf and adding:

mkdir -p ~/.config/pipewire/ && cp -p /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf

context.exec = [
    { path = "pactl"  args = "load-module module-combine-sink" }
]

Then saving the file.

out default switch

https://gist.github.com/miyl/40cdf1a66b360ad8ec0b19e2ffa56194

set default sink

https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/ozcxpa/pipewire_how_to_set_default_sink_persistently/

pactl list short sinks    # get sink name
pactl set-default-sink <set default sink>

Reference List

1. https://www.maketecheasier.com/install-configure-pipewire-linux/
2. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire