Plasma and tearing control

Eluvrion · 2025-06-02 12:06:01

Hello everyone,

I'm encountering an issue while running Plasma on Wayland. I'm trying to disable the forced VSync for certain games (namely Minecraft and a few games I have on GOG/Lutris) by using Plasma's window rules to allow tearing. However, no matter what I try, the settings don't seem to have any effect, and I continue to experience the characteristic input lag.

To test if the settings worked, I tried to run Minecraft with the "Allow Tearing" set to yes on the window rules (I selected the correct window name by using the "Detect window properties" inside the rule's menu) but I still can't see any tearing despite achieving 800+ FPS.
The same happens with Cyberpunk 2077 on Lutris from my GOG account, whether I run it through Proton-CachyOS or standard Proton-GE (from the AUR) and even when using the (still experimental, I think?) Wayland driver from Proton-CachyOS or standard XWayland.

I don't have a FreeSync/VRR monitor; mine is just a standard Samsung 60Hz display but I can really feel the difference between VSync on and off and it's very annoying. On X11, by disabling TearFree and following the wiki, I can have full tearing and the lowest input lag but I really don't want to give up Wayland, since I had a fantastic experience with it so far.

I don't know if it's relevant, but I'm currently running 6.15.0-2-cachyos on an RX 7700 XT

Thanks in advance for any help! (And please excuse any grammar mistakes, as English is not my first language.)

Last edited by Eluvrion (2025-06-02 12:07:41)

seth · 2025-06-02 15:31:49

I don't know if it's relevant, but I'm currently running 6.15.0-2-cachyos on an RX 7700 XT

https://bbs.archlinux.org/misc.php?action=rules

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Intel_ … on_(VSYNC)
I do not think that it's going to be possible to allow tearing for certain windows if the compositor itself is still syncing to vblank (because it creates an invariable fence) - so you'd set that globally, restart the session and (hopefully) get unsynced (tearing) output anywhere.
There may be an exception for fullscreen windows, but idk whether kwin implements such.

Eluvrion · 2025-06-03 16:57:14

Thanks for the reply and sorry if I posted without noticing that rule - I had just installed the kernel from their repos, I thought that wasn't gonna be the culprit, my bad and thanks for calling me out.

I've had some time to tinker today:
- I switched off the CachyOS repo and got the default Arch kernel back, but I've got the same problem.
- I did try Sway, after reading a few articles that mentioned tearing-control: by setting the "output * allow_tearing yes" parameter to allow tearing, as suggested on the wiki page, I did notice that the input lag was far lower and I DID notice tearing (in some situations) thus it works over there (with fullscreen windows of course, windowed apps are unaffected by that settings).

I also gave a look at the Intel's wiki page and gave it a try but I had no luck on KDE and neither on Sway, although the setting I mentioned earlier on Sway DID work.
I suppose there's nothing I can do then?

seth · 2025-06-03 19:32:18

by setting the "output * allow_tearing yes" parameter to allow tearing

Yes, that'll affect all of sway - you'll have to do that for all of kwin_wayland and the only way I can imagine this to possibly work is by disabling it in the .drirc.
There's no point in disabling vsync in some window but then syncing in the compositor when the sync introduces major lag.

V1del · 2025-06-04 00:26:30

There's a global per monitor setting for this in Kwin/Kscreen the "Display" systemsettings -- or

kcmshell6 kcm_kscreen

, did you toggle that?

Eluvrion · 2025-06-04 10:20:28

V1del wrote:

There's a global per monitor setting for this in Kwin/Kscreen the "Display" systemsettings -- or
kcmshell6 kcm_kscreen
, did you toggle that?

Yes, but it doesn't seem to be behaving as I expect. All games run through Wine or natively (like Minecraft, even when using the repo distributed libGLFW so as to run it through Wayland and not XWayland) have uncapped FPS and are fullscreen, yet I still can't see any tearing, and there's that noticeable amount of input lag.

So far, tearing has only worked through Sway. I even had success setting it per-application, so as not to have any tearing on Firefox, for example.
I'm either configuring the window rules incorrectly on Plasma, or maybe there's something I'm not getting right about Wayland and its presentation modes?

Arch Linux

#1 2025-06-02 12:06:01

Plasma and tearing control

#2 2025-06-02 15:31:49

Re: Plasma and tearing control

#3 2025-06-03 16:57:14

Re: Plasma and tearing control

#4 2025-06-03 19:32:18

Re: Plasma and tearing control

#5 2025-06-04 00:26:30

Re: Plasma and tearing control

#6 2025-06-04 10:20:28

Re: Plasma and tearing control

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