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8	NVidia

Foreword

There is no official Hyprland support for Nvidia hardware. However, many people have had success with the instructions on this page.

You can choose between the proprietary Nvidia drivers or the open source Nouveau driver. For the proprietary drivers, there are 3 varieties: the current closed source driver named 'nvidia' (or 'nvidia-dkms') which is under active development; the legacy closed source drivers 'nvidia-3xxxx' for older cards which Nvidia no longer actively supports; and the 'nvidia-open' driver which is currently an alpha stage attempt to open source a part of their closed source driver for newer cards.

If the proprietary drivers support your graphics card, it's generally recommended to use them instead, as it has significantly improved performance and power management for newer GPUs.

However, keep in mind that if the proprietary Nvidia drivers do not work properly on your computer, the Nouveau driver might work fine. This will likely be the case for older cards.

The nvidia-open drivers are still not up to feature parity with the proprietary drivers. One issue is with suspend (e.g. closing the lid on your laptop).

Proprietary drivers setup

You can choose between the nvidia or the nvidia-dkms package. There are pros and cons for each, but it is generally recommended to use the dkms package, as you won't have to rebuild the initramfs manually every time the kernel and drivers update, for example. If you're using a kernel that isn't linux or linux-lts, the dkms package is required.

Installation

Install the following packages:

nvidia or nvidia-dkms: The driver itself. Optionally, the open source drivers from NVIDIA can be installed as nvidia-open or nvidia-open-dkms.
nvidia-utils: The userspace graphics drivers. You need this for running Vulkan applications. If you'd like to use apps like Steam or Wine, install lib32-nvidia-utils as well.
egl-wayland (libnvidia-egl-wayland1 and libnvidia-egl-gbm1 on Ubuntu): This is required in order to enable compatibility between the EGL API and the Wayland protocol.

DRM kernel mode setting

Since NVIDIA does not load kernel mode setting by default, enabling it is required to make Wayland compositors function properly. To enable it, the NVIDIA driver modules need to be added to the initramfs.

Edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf. In the MODULES array, add the following module names:

MODULES=(... nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm ...)

Then, create and edit /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf. Add this line to the file:

options nvidia_drm modeset=1 fbdev=1

Lastly, rebuild the initramfs with sudo mkinitcpio -P, and reboot.

More information is available here.

Environment variables

Add these variables to your Hyprland config:

env = LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME,nvidia
env = XDG_SESSION_TYPE,wayland
env = GBM_BACKEND,nvidia-drm
env = __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME,nvidia

cursor {
    no_hardware_cursors = true
}

Previously used WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS environment variable has been deprecated. Do not set it in your configs. Use cursor:no_hardware_cursors instead.

Finishing up

Install a few packages to get some apps to function natively with Wayland for the best compatibility and performance. See the the Master Tutorial.

Reboot your computer.

Launch Hyprland.

It should work now.

VA-API hardware video acceleration

Hardware video acceleration on Nvidia and Wayland is possible with the nvidia-vaapi-driver. This may solve specific issues in Electron apps.

The install instructions are available in the README, however, a quick guide will be given here:

Install the package. On Arch, this is libva-nvidia-driver in the official repos.
Add this variable to your hyprland config:
```
env = NVD_BACKEND,direct
```
See here for more information on this environment variable.

You can check the README to get it working for Firefox.

Other issues

Regarding environment variables

If you encounter crashes in Firefox, remove the line env = GBM_BACKEND,nvidia-drm.
If you face problems with Discord windows not displaying or screen sharing not working in Zoom, first try running them in Native Wayland (more details below). Otherwise, remove or comment the line env = __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME,nvidia.

Multi-monitor with hybrid graphics

On a hybrid graphics device (a laptop with both an Intel and an Nvidia GPU), you will need to remove the optimus-manager package if installed (disabling the service does not work). You also need to change your BIOS settings from hybrid graphics to discrete graphics.

Flickering in Electron / CEF apps

This flickering is likely caused by these apps running in XWayland. To fix the flickering, try running the apps in native Wayland instead.

For most Electron apps, you should be fine just adding this environment variable to your config:

env = ELECTRON_OZONE_PLATFORM_HINT,auto

This has been confirmed to work on Vesktop, VSCodium, Obsidian and will probably work on other Electron apps as well.

For other apps, including CEF apps, you will need to launch them with these flags:

--enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland

To do this easily for Spotify, Arch Linux has a spotify-launcher packages in their official repos. You should use that instead of the spotify package in the AUR. Then, enable the Wayland backend in /etc/spotify-launcher.conf by uncommenting this line:

extra_arguments = ["--enable-features=UseOzonePlatform", "--ozone-platform=wayland"]

Some CEF / Electron apps may also have a respective flags file in ~/.config. For example, for VSCodium, you can add the flags to ~/.config/codium-flags.conf and for Obsidian, you can add the flags to ~/.config/obsidian/user-flags.conf.

On earlier Nvidia driver versions, including 535, you may have to also include the --disable-gpu and --disable-gpu-sandbox flags, but, as the names suggest, you will lose hardware acceleration for whichever app is run with these flags.

For NixOS, you can set the NIXOS_OZONE_WL environment variable to 1, which should automatically configure Electron / CEF apps to run with native Wayland for you.

While it is best to have as many things as possible running natively in Wayland, the flickering will likely be solved in the 555 series of Nvidia driver updates.

Flickering in XWayland games

XWayland games may flicker or present frames out-of-order in a way which makes them unplayable. This is due to the lack of explicit synchronization in the driver.

There are a few fixes:

Install the latest versions of xorg-xwayland and wayland-protocols. Ensure xorg-xwayland is at least version 24.1 and wayland-protocols is at least version 1.34. Both versions include the explicit sync patches.
Install the older Nvidia drivers which do not exhibit this issue. The last ones which would work will be the 535xx series of drivers. These can be installed on Arch via these AUR packages
Install the 555 beta driver. This version contains official support for explicit sync, but is still in beta. These can be installed from the AUR.

More info about explicit sync is available on this blog.

Fixing other random flickering (nuclear method)

Note that this forces performance mode to be active, resulting in increased power-consumption (from 22W idle on a RTX 3070TI, to 74W).

This may not be needed for some users. Only apply these 'fixes' if you do notice flickering artifacts from being idle for ~5 seconds.

Make a new file at /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf and paste this in:

options nvidia NVreg_RegistryDwords="PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2222; PowerMizerLevel=0x3; PowerMizerDefault=0x3; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x3"

Reboot your computer and it should be working.

If it does not, try:

Lowering your monitor's refresh rate: This can stop the flickering altogether.
Using the Nouveau driver as mentioned above.

Suspend/wakeup issues

Enable the services nvidia-suspend.service, nvidia-hibernate.service and nvidia-resume.service, they will be started by systemd when needed.

Add nvidia.NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations=1 to your kernel parameters if you haven't already.

As previously mentioned, suspend functions are currently broken on nvidia-open-dkms due to a bug, so make sure you're on nvidia-dkms.

For Nix users, the equivalent of the above is

# configuration.nix

boot.kernelParams = [ "nvidia.NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations=1" ];

hardware.nvidia.powerManagement.enable = true;

# Making sure to use the proprietary drivers until the issue above is fixed upstream
hardware.nvidia.open = false;

Still having issues?

If you're still having issues after following this guide, you can join the Hyprland Discord and ask for help in the #hyprland-nvidia channel.

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