Support isolated live window ScreenCast streams

Render selected toplevels through a private portal-only capture protocol, preserve logical snapshot geometry, and renegotiate PipeWire video on window resizing. Bound outstanding snapshots and retry temporary contention; stop on source closure and session locking.

Validation: portal unit tests (31), capture budget unit, private-bus portal contracts, and real nested/PipeWire isolation, workspace, resize, close and paused-lock tests pass. Independent review cleared. Monitor restore integration timed out on both this build and the unchanged previous compositor under the current nested host.
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Samuel Onoja committed 2026-09-30 04:02:33 +01:00
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# Screen sharing and recording
Ferese includes a ScreenCast portal backend, `xdg-desktop-portal-ferese`.
Applications use the standard desktop portal to request a display, then receive
Applications use the standard desktop portal to request a display or window, then receive
video through PipeWire. A recorder or conferencing application handles encoding,
saving files, or sending video; those tasks do not run inside the compositor.
@@ -25,8 +25,14 @@ may remain at the path shown in the error.
## Start sharing
Use a Wayland screen-sharing or recording source in your application. Ferese
opens a display picker. Select a display and press **Share**. Nothing is selected
by default. Applications that request multiple displays can select multiple available displays.
opens a native source picker. Depending on what the application requests, choose
from displays, windows, or both and press **Share**. Nothing is selected by default.
Applications that request multiple sources can select up to eight. Display and
window choices are grouped separately. Windows show their title and application.
Window streams capture only the selected app's toplevel and subsurfaces, even
when covered or on another workspace. Separate popups and compositor decorations
are excluded. Resizing a shared window updates the video size without ending the
session. Closing that window ends sharing.
The picker uses your Ferese theme colors, font, and shell corner radius. Its
background uses the same compositor material as popovers and authentication
prompts: opaque in solid mode, or blurred and translucent using the shared
@@ -37,14 +43,15 @@ Ferese’s built-in recorder uses the top-bar stop control instead, leaving your
windows accessible after display selection. The command-line recorder keeps the
sharing window when it is not launched by the shell. Press **Stop sharing** or
close the sharing window to revoke an ordinary application’s session. Closing the requesting application,
locking Ferese, disconnecting the selected display, or changing its capture size
also ends sharing. By default, each request asks for consent. If an application requests saved
locking Ferese, disconnecting the selected display, or changing a monitor's capture
size also ends sharing. By default, each request asks for consent. If an application requests saved
permissions, the picker offers an **Allow without asking** switch, off by default.
Permissions can last while the application runs or until revoked, as requested
by the app. The standard portal frontend owns permission storage and revocation.
A changed or missing display, different app, or changed cursor options asks again.
Displays without a reliable EDID identity, including nested previews, always need
fresh consent. Stopping a stream ends that stream; it does not erase a previously
fresh consent. Window selections also require fresh consent and cannot enable saved
display permissions. Stopping a stream ends that stream; it does not erase a previously
saved permission.
Everything visible on a shared display, including notifications, is included.
@@ -76,7 +83,8 @@ configuration is preserved during installation.
## Current capabilities
- Monitor capture, one PipeWire stream per selected display, at up to 30 fps.
- Monitor and isolated window capture, one PipeWire stream per source, up to 30 fps.
- Window streams keep working across workspace switches and renegotiate on resize.
- Hidden or embedded pointer, as requested by the application.
- Logical stream position and size, including fractional output scales.
- Wayland parent-window relationships for the consent picker.
@@ -84,8 +92,8 @@ configuration is preserved during installation.
- Cancellation during selection, an explicit stop control, and process cleanup.
- ScreenCast backend version 4 with explicit opt-in saved display permissions.
Window-only sharing, region selection, and audio capture in Ferese’s recorder
are not implemented yet. Other recording applications can handle audio separately.
Region selection and audio capture in Ferese’s recorder are not implemented yet.
The top-bar recorder currently requests monitors. Other recording applications can handle audio separately.
Video currently uses CPU copies through the compositor's shared-memory screencopy path, not DMA-BUF zero-copy. High-resolution
or multiple-display recording can therefore use significant CPU and memory
bandwidth. A paused stream checks capture availability once per second so locking