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Is there a way to turn on the screen programmatically in Wayland (KDE Plasma 6)? (self.linux)

submitted 4 days ago by blackbeard to c/linux@programming.dev

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Hi everyone, I’m running KDE Plasma 6 with Wayland and I’m trying to find a way to turn on the screen programmatically via the command line. In X11, I could use xset dpms force on, but this doesn’t work in Wayland due to its security model. Has anyone found a reliable method to wake or turn on the screen from the command line in a Wayland session? I’m aware of the security and architectural reasons behind this limitation, but I’m curious if there are any workarounds, compositor-specific DBus calls, or third-party tools that might help. What I’ve tried so far: xset dpms force on (fails, as expected)

Simulating keyboard input with wtype/ydotool (unreliable)

Checking KWin’s DBus interface (no obvious method exposed)

Context: I’m automating some tasks and would like to avoid switching back to X11 just for this feature. Any insights, scripts, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance for your help.

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[–] gartheom@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I use this in a cronjob to turn a raspberry pi screen off at night and back on in the morning:

wlr-randr --output "HDMI-A-1" --off

wlr-randr --output "HDMI-A-1" --on

I've also go this environment variable set but I don't know if it is needed outside of cron:

XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000

[–] blackbeard 1 points 2 days ago

Thank you for sharing your setup. Your solution using wlr-randr in a cron job is indeed useful for wlroots-based compositors (such as Sway, Hyprland, or labwc), where the wlr-output-management protocol is supported.

For those (like me) encountering the error 'compositor doesn’t support wlr-output-management-unstable-v1', this indicates that the compositor in use (e.g., KDE/KWin, GNOME/Mutter, or other non-wlroots compositors) does not support wlr-randr. In such cases, alternatives should be considered.

I will be post my findings, I can't believe I'm the only or just one of the few looking to archive this in a laptop..