WAYLOCK(1)

📦
version 1.6.0 · 4 versions
, in arch rolling

✨ WAYLOCK(1) ✨ — the waylock manual, bestie edition 💅

okay so you opened the waylock(1) general commands manual page and honestly? good for you. this is the whole thing, translated into vibes, with zero facts lost. let's go 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

waylock — a small Wayland screenlocker 🎀

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

waylock [options]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Waylock is a small screenlocker for Wayland compositors that implement ext-session-lock-v1. and the way that ext-session-lock-v1 is significantly more robust than the previous client-side Wayland screen locking approaches? iconic. main character protocol behavior, fr fr. 👑

the important part, and like actually important: if the screenlocker crashes, the session does NOT get unlocked. no cap. your session stays locked. slay. 🔥

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -h — print a help message and exit. that's it, that's the whole flag 💖
  • -version — print the version number and exit. cute little flex 🌸
  • -log-level [error|warning|info|debug] — set the log level of waylock. at the error log level, only errors are logged. at the debug log level, everything is logged, including verbose debug messages. yes, everything. she's chatty 💬
  • -fork-on-lock — fork to the background after locking the session. this is useful for integrating with idle management daemons without racing to lock the session before suspend. with this option, waylock will exit once the session has been locked and it is safe to suspend. 🧚 no racing, only vibes.
  • -ready-fd fd — write a newline to file descriptor fd (a number) after locking, and close the fd. useful if a fork-less lock notification is needed; for example, for integration with a service manager. ✨ (fd is a number, bestie, don't get weird with it)
  • -ignore-empty-password — do not submit empty passwords to PAM for validation when the Enter key is pressed. instead, do nothing. this may be useful if, for example, the Enter key is used to wake the computer from sleep 😴 like okay go back to sleep then
  • -init-color 0xRRGGBB — set the initial color. (default: 0x002b36) 🎨
  • -input-color 0xRRGGBB — set the color used after input. (default: 0x6c71c4) 💜
  • -input-alt-color 0xRRGGBB — set the alternate color used after input. (default is what -input-color is set to) 🌈
  • -fail-color 0xRRGGBB — set the color used on authentication failure. (default: 0xdc322f) 💀

🎀 USAGE 🎀

run the waylock executable to lock the session. all monitors will be blanked with the -init-color. typing causes the color to change to the -input-color. if -input-alt-color is set, the typing color will alternate between this and the former. Esc or Ctrl+U clears all current input, while Backspace deletes the last UTF-8 codepoint. ⌨️✨

to unlock the session, type your password and press Enter. if the password is correct, waylock will unlock the session and exit. otherwise, the color will change to the -fail-color and you may try again. 🙈 we've all been there.

in order to automatically run waylock after a certain amount of time with no input or before sleep, the swayidle(1) utility or a similar program may be used. see the swayidle(1) man page for details. 💤

ngl, the color-changing thing is genuinely such a serve. vibe check: passed. 💅

👑 AUTHORS 👑

maintained by Isaac Freund <mail@isaacfreund.com> who is assisted by open source contributors. for more information about waylock's development, see https://codeberg.org/ifreund/waylock. 🫶

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

pam(8), swayidle(1)

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this version lives at https://codeberg.org/ifreund/wa... and it's dated 2026-05-09 — so like, that's the source, the version, and the date, all wrapped up with a bow 🎀💖 stay locked, stay safe, periodt. 🌈

📦 where this page comes from