wl-screenshare

Use your old tablet as second monitor on Wayland

Note

This project is under development, I work on it with I find time It has been tested only on Sway. (22/09/2024)

At the current state this project is more a POC. I use it to study and work, but sometimes it could crash or not work properly.

As of now I have no intention in writing from scratch my own implementation to obtain the frames. Instead I will use the already working code provided by wf-recorder and gpu-screen-recorder (crazy fast).

Application and server code need refactoring!.

Design

Application

The application receives the encoded frames from the TCP server and display them.

Server

The server gets the pixel of the screen, encodes the stream and sends it to the application using TCP socket.

Build

Application

Just open the application/wl-screenshare-app folder using Android Studio.

Server

You need meson and ninja to compile the project.

cd server/wl-screenshare-server
meson build --prefix=/usr --buildtype=release
ninja -C build

To compile the modified version of wf-recoder:

cd server/wf-recorder
meson build --prefix=/usr --buildtype=release
ninja -C build install

To compile the modified version of gpu-screen-recorder:

cd server/gpu-screen-recorder
meson build --prefix=/usr --buildtype=release
ninja -C build install

Usage

The server must be reachable from the application over the network throught the port 53516.

Warning

There is no encryption so I suggest to not use it under public wifi

The server must run first!

Application

Insert the IP of the server in the textfield and select the encoding you prefer.

Warning

Encoding of application and server must match

Server

Example for wf-recorder and wl-screenshare-server:

# h264
wf-recorder -c h264 -d /dev/dri/renderD128 -D -y
wf-recorder -c h264 -d /dev/dri/renderD128 -D -y -o "eDP-1"
# h264
wl-screenshare-server -c h264 -d /dev/dri/renderD128 -D -y
wl-screenshare-server -c h264 -d /dev/dri/renderD128 -D -y -o "eDP-1"

# h265
wf-recorder -c hevc_vaapi -d /dev/dri/renderD128 -D -y
# h265
wl-screenshare-server -c hevc_vaapi -d /dev/dri/renderD128 -D -y

where -o is the name of your display

Example for gpu-screen-recorder:

# h264
gpu-screen-recorder -q high -w "eDP-1" -encoder gpu -f 60 -a default_output -k h264 -o wow.mp4
# h265
gpu-screen-recorder -q high -w "eDP-1" -encoder gpu -f 60 -a default_output -k h265 -o wow.mp4

where -w is the name of your display

Headless Display on Sway

If you want to use a headless display on Sway:

swaymsg create_output

This command will create a display HEADLESS-1.

wf-recorder and wl-screenshare-server suport headless display, while gpu-screen-recorder does not.

Limitations

• single connection
• data over TCP is not encrypted
• only h264 and hevc are supported by the application
• no headless display with gpu-screen-recorder

TODO

• support ext-image-capture-source-v1 and ext-image-copy-capture-v1 screen copy protocols
• allow multiple screens
• refactor application and server
• write unit tests

Thanks

The server code in server/wl-screenshare-server is to be considered a fork of wf-recorder Kudos for the work done by:

• wf-recorder
• gpu-screen-recorder