--- title: Developing Wayland Color Management and High Dynamic Range description: Wayland currently lacks proper color management and HDR support. On Linux, the only way to watch HDR content on an HDR monitor is to use the DRM KMS API... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/developing-wayland-color-management-and-high-dynamic-range-hszqb0mer twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Developing Wayland Color Management and High Dynamic Range | daily.dev og:description: Wayland currently lacks proper color management and HDR support. On Linux, the only way to watch HDR content on an HDR monitor is to use the DRM KMS API... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/developing-wayland-color-management-and-high-dynamic-range-hszqb0mer og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/hsZqb0mER.png og:image:alt: Developing Wayland Color Management and High Dynamic Range og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Developing Wayland Color Management and High Dynamic Range **[Collabora Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/collabora)** · 8 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Wayland currently lacks proper color management and HDR support. On Linux, the only way to watch HDR content on an HDR monitor is to use the DRM KMS API directly, bypassing any window system — Kodi being one of the few apps capable of this. A group of developers from Collabora, AMD, and Intel, led by Sebastian Wick, has begun drafting a Wayland protocol extension (wayland-protocols MR14) that unifies traditional ICC-based color management with HDR support. Key design decisions include running monitors in HDR mode permanently while having the compositor convert SDR application output, and exploring relative rather than absolute luminance at the protocol level to accommodate varying viewing environments. The effort is still in early research stages with no fixed timeline, expected to take months for a complete draft protocol and years before landing in mainstream Wayland desktops. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How can I watch HDR content on an HDR monitor in Linux right now? The only way to watch HDR content on an HDR monitor in Linux without a proper Wayland or X11 HDR protocol is to use the DRM KMS API directly, which means bypassing any window system and desktop environment entirely. Kodi is one of the very few applications capable of doing this. _Developers tracking Linux HDR display progress follow the Wayland protocol work on daily.dev._ ### Why does the Wayland HDR protocol proposal use relative luminance instead of absolute luminance? Relative luminance is being explored because absolute luminance assumes a specific viewing environment — typically a dark room like a movie theatre. Most users view monitors under standard office lighting with varying brightness preferences and hardware capabilities, so content mastered at absolute luminance would appear far too dark in typical environments. Relative luminance avoids this assumption. _Engineers deciding on HDR display architecture for Linux compositors track these protocol trade-offs on daily.dev._ ### What is the Wayland color management and HDR protocol extension proposal and where can I find it? The proposal is tracked as wayland/wayland-protocols merge request 14 (MR14). Because it is a long-running MR with multiple contributors, sub-merge-requests are used to propose changes, hosted in Sebastian Wick's fork at gitlab.freedesktop.org/swick/wayland-protocols. The design goals and color pipeline overview are documented in a draft file called color.rst in that repository. _Open source contributors working on Wayland compositor features keep up with protocol developments on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Linux finally has working HDR, but you still can't use it for most streaming services](https://daily.dev/posts/linux-finally-has-working-hdr-but-you-still-can-t-use-it-for-most-streaming-services-5kvkjhtdt) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Wayland's Weston 16 Alpha Brings HDR Improvements, Vulkan Renderer Fixes](https://daily.dev/posts/wayland-s-weston-16-alpha-brings-hdr-improvements-vulkan-renderer-fixes-bnkh3gomy) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [AMD HDR/Color Improvement For Their Linux Driver & KDE - Co-Developed By Claude Code](https://daily.dev/posts/amd-hdr-color-improvement-for-their-linux-driver-kde---co-developed-by-claude-code-rpq81ntc2) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/developing-wayland-color-management-and-high-dynamic-range-hszqb0mer) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Developing Wayland Color Management and High Dynamic Range","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/developing-wayland-color-management-and-high-dynamic-range-hszqb0mer","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/developing-wayland-color-management-and-high-dynamic-range-hszqb0mer"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:56:15.136Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:30:46.543Z","description":"Wayland currently lacks proper color management and HDR support. 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