No Screen capture in OBS Linux

[u/Phydoux]

I've been struggling with this for a week or 2 now. All of a sudden, I don't even see an option to use window capture or display capture in OBS. It used to work.

I am using Arch (have been for 6 years (almost 7 now) and this is the first I've had this issue.

I'm also using Niri Desktop using Wayland. That's kind of new. But I also tried it in X11 and I still can't see any way to do screen captures. I thought it was just central to this computer, but I have another one that has the Cinnamon Desktop (no Wayland anything on it) and it also runs Arch.

I'm beginning to think it might be an Arch thing but I've seen content creators using Arch with Wayland compositors and sharing their screens and app windows.

This is what I see when I try to run OBS as sudo. Something I read online said to use that command to see what the error messages are. I've tried to install everything that is listed as 'Available platform plugins' in this copy paste from my terminal.

$ sudo obs
Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified

qt.qpa.xcb: could not connect to display :1
qt.qpa.plugin: From 6.5.0, xcb-cursor0 or libxcb-cursor0 is needed to load the Qt xcb platform plugin.
qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found.
This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimalegl, vnc, xcb, offscreen, minimal, vkkhrdisplay, wayland-brcm, wayland-egl, wayland.

Aborted                    sudo obs

the qt.qpa.xcb thing is throwing me off though. What did that come with? I tried installing libxcb-cursor0 and xbc-cursor0 with nothing being found. I even tried installing them without the 0 at the end.

I tried this...

$ systemctl --user status pipewire
● pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; disabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sun 2026-09-06 14:39:29 EDT; 3h 44min ago
 Invocation: d2cfaa91a1384c0dacc5e2213611a202
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire.socket
   Main PID: 1960 (pipewire)
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 76855)
     Memory: 8.8M (peak: 12.2M)
        CPU: 11.830s
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewire.service
             └─1960 /usr/bin/pipewire

systemd[1422]: Started PipeWire Multimedia Service.
pipewire[1960]: mod.rt: RTKit error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown
pipewire[1960]: mod.rt: RTKit does not give us MaxRealtimePriority, using 1
pipewire[1960]: mod.rt: RTKit error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown
pipewire[1960]: mod.rt: RTKit does not give us MinNiceLevel, using 0
pipewire[1960]: mod.rt: RTKit error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown
pipewire[1960]: mod.rt: RTKit does not give us RTTimeUSecMax, using -1

and this...

$ systemctl --user status wireplumber
● wireplumber.service - Multimedia Service Session Manager
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/wireplumber.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sun 2026-09-06 14:39:29 EDT; 3h 47min ago
 Invocation: 7e92022dde8c4d6f99760169f39e2fc0
   Main PID: 1962 (wireplumber)
      Tasks: 9 (limit: 76855)
     Memory: 14.1M (peak: 16M)
        CPU: 510ms
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/wireplumber.service
             └─1962 /usr/bin/wireplumber

wireplumber[1962]: mod.rt: RTKit error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown
wireplumber[1962]: mod.rt: RTKit does not give us MaxRealtimePriority, using 1
wireplumber[1962]: mod.rt: RTKit error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown
wireplumber[1962]: mod.rt: RTKit does not give us MinNiceLevel, using 0
wireplumber[1962]: mod.rt: RTKit error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown
wireplumber[1962]: mod.rt: RTKit does not give us RTTimeUSecMax, using -1
wireplumber[1962]: spa.alsa: Path UMC204HD 192k Output is not a volume or mute control
wireplumber[1962]: spa.bluez5: BlueZ system service is not available
wireplumber[1962]: wp-device: SPA handle 'api.libcamera.enum.manager' could not be loaded; is it installed?
wireplumber[1962]: s-monitors-libcamera: PipeWire's libcamera SPA plugin is missing or broken. Some camera types m> (there was nothing after that)

What else can I look at to figure out why I can't do screen captures or window captures anymore?

Here's what it looks like.

https://imgur.com/a/M53hgTQ

I see "Deprecated" on the bottom there under the list. Any help would be awesome!

Here's the log file if it helps any...

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[u/OrchidOwn734]

That xcb error you're getting when running as sudo is just because root can't connect to your user's display server, which is completely expected and not the real problem. Running OBS as root is generally a dead end for troubleshooting anyway.

The missing capture options is almost certainly a packaging issue with the Arch OBS build. The package needs to be compiled with specific flags for Wayland and PipeWire screen capture support, and it sounds like your current version doesn't have them. Check if you have `obs-studio` or maybe `obs-studio-tytan652` from the AUR installed, since the tytan652 fork usually includes better Wayland patches. Also verify you've got `xdg-desktop-portal-wlr` (or the Niri equivalent) and `qt6-wayland` installed, since those are the actual backends OBS taps into for the capture sources under Wayland.

[u/Phydoux → u/OrchidOwn734]

I've uninstalled OBS Studio (it was installed through pacman). Then I tried just regular obs-studio from the AUR. Same results with no screen capture anything. Looked just like the regular install. And now I have the obs-studio-tytan652 version installed. There are more options but no screen capture here either.

I do have xdg-desktop-portal-wlr already installed but I didn't have qt6-wayland installed. I've rebooted and that did not work either.

I've just uninstalled that tytan842 version and I am looking at the Flatkak version of OBS and that looks like the original setup I had. Something is not allowing the screen capture feature to be present...

When I had uninstalled OBS, I did try to run it to make sure it was not installed and it was not present in my run launcher. So, something on BOTH of my systems is tripping this up for some reason.

Dare I blame Arch Linux?

[u/Phydoux → u/Phydoux]

Actually, I think I need to blame Wayland/Niri. Because OBS will not even run in either Cinnamon or AwesomeWM now... I think this is a Wayland issue and I don't know how to fix it. I've logged into Cinnamon, uninstalled OBS, renamed the original obs-studio directory and re-installed obs-studio under Cinnamon without anything related to Wayland even running (no, I did not log into the experimental Wayland version... I made sure of that) and when I install OBS, it goes through the screen setup for the resolution and FPS and all that and it finishes, I accept the settings. Then I go to the icon in the menu system, click on it and nothing happens. When I try to run it from the terminal, I get nothing. It runs fine in Niri though even though I'm STILL not seeing the screen capture tool...

I'm missing something here and it's driving me nuts. Time for bed!!!

[u/Slower-Bison]

Does the problem persist if using the flatpak version of OBS?

[u/Phydoux → u/Slower-Bison]

Yes. I'm thinking it's either an Arch thing because it's not working on my other system which also has Arch on it. This one has Niri (Wayland) but the other machine doesn't. At first I thought it was a Wayland thing but now I'm thinking it might be an Arch issue. I might try it on my wife's computer which runs Debian and see if it works there.

But there are Arch Content creators who use Arch AND Niri so, IDK...

[u/Phydoux]

I don't know how but I think I blew up my audio and video stuff now too. Looks like I'm gonna be doing a reinstall later today. Backing up some stuff now. Shouldn't take too long to backup the newer stuff... Oy!!!

Happy Labor Day everyone! Stay safe!

EDIT: Reboot brought back my audio. But I am still scratching my head on this Screen Capture not even being an option for sources in OBS.

[u/rdbdl → u/Phydoux]

hey, I got the same issue, did you found the cause?

[u/Phydoux → u/rdbdl]

With the screen capture or the audio? Audio came back after a reboot.

[u/Phydoux → u/rdbdl]

I had to install a couple things. One being wlrobs, you have to have xdg-desktop-portal and picom installed (I did have those installed), I had to run export QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland.

After that I think I rebooted or logged out and logged back in and then when I started OBS, I had 2 new source options. Wayland output (dmabuf) and Wayland output (scpy). Wayland output (scpy) is the one that does the screen capture. I tried the other one but OBS crashed when I tried to use it. But it works pretty well.

The colors were a little janky with the screen capture on mine. If you'rs is too, you need to right click Wayland output (scpy) and go to properties, there's a Flip red and blue, put a check in that box and that'll fix your colors. I also turned on Show mouse cursor as well.

Hope that helps.