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swww-daemon(1) General Commands Manual swww-daemon(1)

NAME

swww-daemon

SYNOPSIS

swww-daemon [OPTIONS]

OPTIONS

-f,--format <argb|abgr|rgb|bgr>

Force the daemon to use a specific wl_shm format.

By default, swww-daemon will use argb, because it is most widely supported. Generally speaking, formats with 3 channels will use 3/4 the memory of formats with 4 channels. Also, bgr formats are more efficient than rgb formats because we do not need to do an extra swap of the bytes when decoding the image (though the difference is unnoticiable).

-l,--layer <background|bottom>

Which layer to display the background in. Defaults to `background`.

We do not accept layers `top` and `overlay` because those would make your desktoop unusable by simply putting an image on top of everything else. If there is ever a use case for these, we can reconsider it.

-n,--namespace <namespace>

Which wayland namespace to append to `swww-daemon`.

The result namespace will the `swww-daemon<specified namespace>`. This also affects the name of the `swww-daemon` socket we will use to communicate with the `client`. Specifically, our socket name is ${WAYLAND_DISPLAY}-swww-daemon.<specified namespace>.socket.

Some compositors can have several different wallpapers per output. This allows you to differentiate between them. Most users will probably not have to set anything in this option.

--no-cache

Don't search the cache for the last wallpaper for each output. Useful if you always want to select which image 'swww' loads manually using 'swww img'

-q,--quiet

Makes the daemon only log errors.

-h, --help

Print help (see a summary with '-h')

-V, --version

Print version

DESCRIPTION

The swww-daemon will run continuously, waiting for commands in ${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}/swww-${WAYLAND_DISPLAY}.socket (or /tmp/swww/swww-${WAYLAND_DISPLAY}.socket, if $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is not set). The daemon will take care of both creating and deleting that file when it is initialized or killed.

SEE ALSO

swww(1)

2025-09-21