The Labwc project has released version 0.20, the first version of its lightweight, Openbox-inspired Wayland window-stacking compositor, built with wlroots 0.20. The versioning scheme now aligns the minor version with the wlroots version, moving from the previous 0.9 series directly to 0.20.
As this is the first Labwc release with wlroots 0.20, developers caution that early issues may arise. Users who prefer wlroots 0.19 can continue with the 0.9.x maintenance branch, which now receives only bug fixes.
A key addition to this update is the Show Desktop action. The new ToggleShowDesktop feature, assigned to Super+D by default, hides or restores windows and aligns Labwc with traditional desktop environments.
Initial toplevel capture support enables screenshots of specific windows, though the implementation is partial. The release notes clarify that support for XWayland child and unmanaged windows, xdg child window positioning, xdg subsurfaces, and xdg popup positioning is not yet available.
The release adds HDR10 output support when using the Vulkan renderer. Labwc also now supports the color-management-v1 and color-representation-manager-v1 protocols. Plus, menu handling now includes support for menu accelerators, one-letter mnemonics that let users quickly select or execute menu items.
On top of that, window switching now includes two new actions: NextWindowImmediate and PreviousWindowImmediate. A new <focus><raiseOnFocusDelay> configuration option allows a brief delay for raise-on-focus behavior when enabled.
For systemd-based setups, Labwc 0.20 installs a new labwc-session.target user unit when systemd is available. The release also introduces an overrideInhibition option for keybindings and a <privilegedInterfaces> configuration option to restrict privileged protocols.
Several XWayland fixes are included as well. Labwc now handles missing XWayland packages more gracefully when built with optional XWayland support, allowing the compositor to run without XWayland installed.
The release also improves initial geometry handling for XWayland windows, syncs always-on-top state with the X.Org Server, and fixes title and icon handling for XWayland override-redirect toggles.
Other fixes address Chromium popup positioning on multi-output setups, session activation environment races with autostart scripts, interactive resizing of fully maximized windows, titlebar updates for empty titles, and nested compositor behavior when the last output is destroyed.
On the changed side, Labwc now uses pactl instead of amixer for default XF86 audio keybindings. The release also removes the cosmic-workspace protocol.
For additional details, see the changelog.
