DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / pipewire-bin / pipewire.conf.5.en
PIPEWIRE.CONF(5) File Formats Manual PIPEWIRE.CONF(5)

pipewire.conf - The PipeWire server configuration file

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pipewire/pipewire.conf

/etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf

/usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf

/usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/

/etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/

PipeWire is a service that facilitates sharing of multimedia content between devices and applications.

On startup, the daemon reads a main configuration file to configure itself. It executes a series of commands listed in the config file.

The config files are loaded in the order listed in the SYNOPSIS. The environment variables PIPEWIRE_CONFIG_DIR, PIPEWIRE_CONFIG_PREFIX and PIPEWIRE_CONFIG_NAME can be used to specify an alternative config directory, subdirectory and file respectively.

Next to the configuration file can be a directory with the same name as the file with a .d/ suffix. All directories in the SYNOPSIS directory search paths are traversed in the listed order and the contents of the *.conf files inside them are appended to the main configuration file as overrides. Object sections are merged and array sections are appended.

The configuration file format is grouped into sections. A section is either a dictionary, {}, or an array, []. Dictionary and array entries are separated by whitespace and may be simple value assignment, an array or a dictionary. For example:

name = value # simple assignment

name = { key1 = value1 key2 = value2 } # a dictionary with two entries

name = [ value1 value2 ] # an array with two entries

name = [ { k = v1 } { k = v2 } ] # an array of dictionaries

The configuration files can be expressed in full JSON syntax but for ease of use, a relaxed format may be used where:

  • : to delimit keys and values can be substuted by = or a space.
" around keys and string can be omited as long as no special characters
are used in the strings.

  • , to separate objects can be replaced with a whitespace character.
  • # can be used to start a comment until the line end



Dictionary. These properties configure the PipeWire instance.
Dictionary. Maps plugin features with globs to a spa library.
Array of dictionaries. Each entry in the array is a dictionary with the name of the module to load, including optional args and flags. Most modules support being loaded multiple times.
Array of dictionaries. Each entry in the array is a dictionary containing the factory to create an object from and optional extra arguments specific to that factory.
Array of dictionaries. Each entry in the array is dictionary containing the path of a program to execute on startup and optional args.

This array used to contain an entry to start the session manager but this mode of operation has since been demoted to development aid. Avoid starting a session manager in this way in production environment.


The PipeWire Developers <https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/issues>; PipeWire is available from https://pipewire.org

pipewire(1), pw-mon(1),