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Wild Penguin

Member

Registered: 2015-03-19

Posts: 388

(Some) applications freeze when switching desktop [Wayland|KDE Plasma]

Hi,

Changing a virtual desktop has this annoying side-effect I didn't have in KDE Plasma when using X.Org.

Most games will freeze. This seems to be a common occurrence according to a web search, however I would like applications to stay running in the background, unless I specifically tell them to stop. Some users even have had problems with mpv and Firefox playing videos, but (I presume) these applications have been updated to be compatible with Wayland (???), as my gripes are with games.

It seems that it is more likely a game application will continue running as I'd like if it is not frame capped (no frame limit and VSync OFF). However that is a workaround I can use sometimes, but does not apply to all games (as the settings might not be there).

I don't know the internals of Wayland nor the X11 protocol, but I presume this has something to do with how Wayland (in some desktop environments?) handles rendering windows which are hidden. And if the application is a Legacy / X.Org one, as it can not render frames ("from it's point of view"), it will freeze other logic, too. However this is all pure speculation, only thing I know for a fact is that application behavior changed when I switched from X11 to Wayland.

Some games (but not limited to) I've experienced issues are Rocket League and FTL. For FTL there are no workarounds - if I change the  VC, it will stop (despite having "Window Focus Auto-Pause: Off". It will pause if on another VC, but happily run if not in focus or minimized on the currently active desktop).

Rocket League will stop all network connection attempts (essentially bail out of matchmaking); can be worked around (partially) with VSync of or environment variables. Elite: Dangerous will also pause, but switch VSync off will allow it to run in the background.

The behavior is especially annoying with games which heavily rely in using 3rd party applications, and a lot of switching out, if they have situations where you just need to pass time - or, even just c**p out if they get "frozen". Some applications don't like being "frozen" by the desktop (e.g. Rocket League).

I've created a troubleshooting subsection a troubleshooting subsection in the wiki. I'd like to find a catch-all solution to restore X11-like behavior instead of the various workarounds I need to do at the moment.

Last edited by Wild Penguin (2026-01-11 16:16:20)

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 72,057

Re: (Some) applications freeze when switching desktop [Wayland|KDE Plasma]

It seems that it is more likely a game application will continue running as I'd like if it is not frame capped (no frame limit and VSync OFF). However that is a workaround I can use sometimes, but does not apply to all games (as the settings might not be there).

export vblank_mode=0 # mesa
export __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=0 #nvidia
# none of them cover vulkan

The surface (window) will be hidden, no longer updated, the gl buffer doesn't swap and single-thread implementation waiting for that then just wait there, you're essentially looking for a compositor specific workaround to have windows that are treated as visible but not rendered to the output buffer.

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Wild Penguin

Member

Registered: 2015-03-19

Posts: 388

Re: (Some) applications freeze when switching desktop [Wayland|KDE Plasma]

Thanks,

This is on AMD. But I will try the vblank_mode=0 in some applications.