pipewire(1)

📦
version 1.6.8 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

✨ pipewire(1) — the PipeWire media server ✨

okay bestie, pull up a chair 🫶 this is the manual page for pipewire, straight out of the General Commands Manual — and yes, the man page is literally named pipewire(1), we're doing this properly bestie 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

pipewire [options]

that's it, that's the whole vibe check. just the command and some options 👑

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

PipeWire is a service — like, a whole thing — and its entire job is facilitating the sharing of multimedia content between devices and applications. audio, video, all of it, getting passed around the group chat of your system 🎀

The pipewire daemon reads a config file, and that config file has its own whole manual page situation going on: it's documented in pipewire.conf(5). go read it, i'll wait 🦋

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -h | --help — shows you the help. the "hey what do i do" button 🙈
  • -v | --verbose — turns the verbosity up by one level. and listen, you can stack this — spec it multiple times if you want maximum yapping 💬
  • --version — spills the version info. iconic. simple. we love her ⭐
  • -c | --config=FILE — loads the config file you hand her. default is pipewire.conf 📄
  • -P | --properties=PROPS — adds the properties you give as a SPA JSON object to the context. fancy ✨

🎀 RUNTIME SETTINGS 🎀

so a PipeWire daemon will also expose a settings metadata object, and that object lets you change some settings at runtime. no restart, no drama, live changes 💅

Normally these settings can bypass any of the restrictions listed in the config options above — yes, even things like quantum and samplerate values. no cap 🫣

You modify the settings with pw-metadata(1):

pw-metadata -n settings                  # list settings
pw-metadata -n settings 0                # list server settings
pw-metadata -n settings 0 log.level 2    # modify a server setting
  • log.level = INTEGER — changes the log level of the PipeWire daemon 🔍
  • clock.rate = INTEGER — the default samplerate 🎵
  • clock.allowed-rates = [ RATE1 RATE2... ] — the allowed samplerates ✅
  • clock.force-rate = INTEGER — temporarily forces the graph to operate in a fixed sample rate. both DSP processing and devices will switch to the new rate immediately. running streams (PulseAudio, native and ALSA applications) will automatically resample to match the new rate. Set the value to 0 to allow the sample rate to vary again. 🌀
  • clock.quantum = INTEGER — the default quantum (buffer size) 📦
  • clock.min-quantum = INTEGER — smallest quantum to be used 🔽
  • clock.max-quantum = INTEGER — largest quantum to be used 🔼
  • clock.force-quantum = INTEGER — temporarily force the graph to operate in a fixed quantum. Set the value to 0 to allow the quantum to vary again. 🌀

🌈 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 🌈

🔌 Socket directories

These three are the find-the-socket squad — used to find the PipeWire socket on the server (and native clients):

  • PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR
  • XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
  • USERPROFILE

and then, individually:

  • PIPEWIRE_CORE — name of the socket to make 🛠️
  • PIPEWIRE_REMOTE — name of the socket to connect to 🔗
  • PIPEWIRE_DAEMON — if you set it to true, then the process becomes a new PipeWire server 👑 main character energy fr

📁 Config directories, config file name and prefix

The directory-finding trio, used to find the config file directories:

  • PIPEWIRE_CONFIG_DIR
  • XDG_CONFIG_HOME
  • HOME

then:

  • PIPEWIRE_CONFIG_PREFIX
  • PIPEWIRE_CONFIG_NAME — these two are used to override the application provided config prefix and config name 💅
  • PIPEWIRE_NO_CONFIG — enables (false) or disables (true) overriding on the default configuration ⚠️ yes, it's inverted, read it twice

🧠 Context information

As part of a client context, the following info gets collected from environment variables and dropped into the context properties:

  • LANG — the current language, in application.language 🗣️
  • XDG_SESSION_ID — set as the application.process.session-id property 🪪
  • DISPLAY — is set as the window.x11.display property 🖥️

🧩 Modules

  • PIPEWIRE_MODULE_DIR — sets the directory where to find PipeWire modules 📦
  • SPA_SUPPORT_LIB — the name of the SPA support lib to load. this can be used to switch to an alternative support library — for example, to run on the EVL realtime kernel ⚡

📝 Logging options

  • JOURNAL_STREAM — is used to parse the stream used for the journal. this is usually configured by systemd 🧾
  • PIPEWIRE_LOG_LINE — enables the logging of line numbers. default true 🔢
  • PIPEWIRE_LOG_TIMESTAMP — logging timestamp type: "local", "monotonic", "realtime", "none". default "local" ⏰
  • PIPEWIRE_LOG — specifies a log file to use instead of the default logger 📄
  • PIPEWIRE_LOG_SYSTEMD — enables the use of systemd for the logger, default true 🧵

🛠️ Other settings

  • PIPEWIRE_CPU — selects the CPU and flags. this is a bitmask of any of the CPU flags 🧮
  • PIPEWIRE_VM — selects the Virtual Machine PipeWire is running on. this can be any of the VM types 💻
  • DISABLE_RTKIT — disables the use of RTKit or the Realtime Portal for realtime scheduling ⏱️
  • NO_COLOR — disables the use of colors in the console output 🎨 (sad. but valid.)

🐛 Debugging options

  • PIPEWIRE_DLCLOSE — enables (true) or disables (false) the use of dlclose when a shared library is no longer in use. when debugging, it might make sense to disable dlclose to be able to get debugging symbols from the object 🔬

🌊 Stream options

  • PIPEWIRE_NODE — makes a stream connect to a specific object.serial or node.name 🎯
  • PIPEWIRE_PROPS — adds extra properties to a stream or filter ➕
  • PIPEWIRE_QUANTUM — forces a specific rate and buffer-size for the stream or filter 📏
  • PIPEWIRE_LATENCY — sets a specific latency for a stream or filter. this is only a suggestion, but the configured latency will not be larger 🐢
  • PIPEWIRE_RATE — sets a rate for a stream or filter. this is only a suggestion. the rate will be switched when the graph is idle 💤
  • PIPEWIRE_AUTOCONNECT — overrides the default stream autoconnect settings 🔄

🧚 Plugin options

  • SPA_PLUGIN_DIR — is used to locate SPA plugins 🧩
  • SPA_DATA_DIR — is used to locate plugin specific config files. this is used by the bluetooth plugin currently to locate the quirks database 🦷
  • SPA_DEBUG — set the log level for SPA plugins. this is usually controlled by the PIPEWIRE_DEBUG variable when the plugins are managed by PipeWire, but some standalone tools (like spa-inspect) use this variable 🐞
  • ACP_BUILDDIR — if set, the ACP profiles are loaded from the builddir 🏗️
  • ACP_PATHS_DIR
  • ACP_PROFILES_DIR — used to locate the ACP paths and profile directories respectively 📂
  • LADSPA_PATH — comma separated list of directories where the ladspa plugins can be found 🎛️
  • LIBJACK_PATH — directory where the jack1 or jack2 libjack.so can be found 🎷

👑 AUTHORS 👑

The PipeWire Developers — they said it, not me: <https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/issues>

and PipeWire is available from <https://pipewire.org> 🫶

🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

pw-top(1), pw-dump(1), pw-mon(1), pw-cat(1), pw-cli(1), libpipewire-modules(7)

go read those too, they're all part of the friend group 💜

lowkey that's the whole page bestie. every flag, every env var, every setting — nothing skipped, nothing invented. iykyk 😭

bye bestie 💖 this was brought to you by PipeWire, version 1.6.8, serving you the pipewire(1) manual page. now go make some audio happen ✨🎀🦋

📦 where this page comes from