Almost a year after the previous 1.11 release, Sway 1.12 is now available as the latest i3-compatible tiling Wayland compositor. The main feature is HDR10 output support when using the Vulkan renderer, advancing Wayland desktop efforts in high-dynamic-range displays, color management, and improved output handling.
Sway 1.12 also adds support for capturing individual windows, a significant improvement for screen sharing and recording workflows where users may need to share only a single application window.
Protocol support has expanded to include color-management-v1, color-representation-v1, xdg-toplevel-tag-v1, ext-workspace-v1, and wl_fixes.
Color handling is improved with a new --device-primaries option for output color_profile, enabling Sway to use color primaries from a display’s EDID data. The sRGB output color profile now uses the piece-wise sRGB transfer function instead of gamma 2.2, as the previous gamma 2.2 behavior is still available through the new gamma22 profile.
On top of that, Sway 1.12 changes its behavior on unsupported GPUs, such as those using NVIDIA’s proprietary driver. Instead of failing to start, Sway now displays an informational message. The support policy remains unchanged; only the startup behavior is different. This message can be disabled with the --unsupported-gpu flag or the SWAY_UNSUPPORTED_GPU environment variable.
Another highlight of this release is that Sway now officially supports starting from display managers, reversing its previous stance. Plus, the default configuration now includes key bindings for playerctl, enabling media key handling by default. Sway 1.12 also adds support for keypad slide switches.
For additional details, see the changelog. Sway 1.12 is now available on the project’s GitHub releases page. Users building from source require wlroots 0.20. Distribution packages will be provided through standard update channels.
