--- title: Weston 12.0: Highlights and changes for Wayland's... description: Weston 12.0 was released with significant new features and changes for Wayland's reference compositor. Key highlights include two new backends (backend-vnc... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/weston-12-0-highlights-and-changes-for-wayland-s-reference-compositor-qz3iqdcjr twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Weston 12.0: Highlights and changes for Wayland's reference compositor | daily.dev og:description: Weston 12.0 was released with significant new features and changes for Wayland's reference compositor. Key highlights include two new backends (backend-vnc... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/weston-12-0-highlights-and-changes-for-wayland-s-reference-compositor-qz3iqdcjr og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/qZ3iqdcjr.png og:image:alt: Weston 12.0: Highlights and changes for Wayland's reference compositor 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. # Weston 12.0: Highlights and changes for Wayland's reference compositor **[Collabora Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/collabora)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Weston 12.0 was released with significant new features and changes for Wayland's reference compositor. Key highlights include two new backends (backend-vnc with TLS/auth support, and a PipeWire backend), support for multiple GPUs as scanout devices (KMS), and tearing support via the tearing-protocol implementation. The backend-drm gained plane rotation, alpha, and HDMI content type properties, plus async page flip detection. libdisplay-info replaces the previous EDID parsing approach, and writeback connectors are now used for screenshots. The color-lcms plugin received precision and performance improvements. launcher-logind has been deprecated in favor of launcher-libseat. libweston-desktop DSO has been merged into libweston, requiring a header path update for existing users. Additional improvements landed in ivi-shell (keyboard focus, input panel support), xwayland (xwayland_shell_v1 protocol), backend-rdp (multi-head), and backend-wayland (window resizing). A shorthand syntax for loading backends, shells, and renderers was also introduced. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What new backends were added in Weston 12.0? Weston 12.0 added two new backends: backend-vnc, which is similar to backend-rdp and based on the aml and neatvnc libraries with TLS support and user authentication, and a PipeWire backend that creates a node for each output and can be used to capture Weston outputs for processing with other applications. _Developers building Wayland compositor integrations track ecosystem releases like this on daily.dev._ ### How do I update my code after libweston-desktop was merged into libweston in Weston 12.0? After the merge, linking with libweston now provides access to the former libweston-desktop library. The only required change is updating the include path from `` to ``. The API itself remains unchanged, so no further code modifications are needed. _Developers maintaining Wayland compositor integrations find breaking-change details like this on daily.dev._ ### Does Weston 12.0 support multiple GPUs as scanout devices? Yes, Weston 12.0 added support for multiple GPUs as KMS scanout devices in backend-drm. This support can be enabled by passing additional devices when starting up the compositor. The same release also integrated plane rotation, alpha, and HDMI content type properties into backend-drm to leverage available display hardware capabilities. _Wayland compositor developers working on multi-GPU setups can follow related developments on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Weston 16.0 Compositor Released With HDR Improvements, Vulkan Fixes](https://daily.dev/posts/weston-16-0-compositor-released-with-hdr-improvements-vulkan-fixes-l4sfjkkcj) · Phoronix · 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 - [Weston 15.0 Wayland Compositor Released With Vulkan Renderer, New Protocols](https://daily.dev/posts/weston-15-0-wayland-compositor-released-with-vulkan-renderer-new-protocols-znkiksvt9) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Weston 15.0 Alpha Released With New Protocols, Experimental Vulkan Renderer](https://daily.dev/posts/weston-15-0-alpha-released-with-new-protocols-experimental-vulkan-renderer-xiqsvjrl7) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/weston-12-0-highlights-and-changes-for-wayland-s-reference-compositor-qz3iqdcjr) ```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":"Weston 12.0: Highlights and changes for Wayland's reference compositor","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/weston-12-0-highlights-and-changes-for-wayland-s-reference-compositor-qz3iqdcjr","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/weston-12-0-highlights-and-changes-for-wayland-s-reference-compositor-qz3iqdcjr"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:53:56.607Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:27:02.359Z","description":"Weston 12.0 was released with significant new features and changes for Wayland's reference compositor. 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