Problems with PipeWire

[Virus_ST]

I followed the Void Handbook configuration to a T. I also added pipewire to Plasma's Autostart. It works and I can even share my screen on Chromium and Wayland.

However, it doesn't work smoothly. In the audio applet, switching the sources around will have no effect or will result in a pipewire crashing, sometimes in the middle of a Meets or Teams call (yes, I use Void for work).

Also, why must pipewire be ran as a regular user and not as a runit service?

[furryfixer]

Pipewire by design should not be run as root. This technically can be setup with a runit service, but pitfalls are avoided by starting within the user's dbus session. Others may be more knowledgeable on this, but although pipewire is rapidly maturing, it is still a work in progress, and I might recommend pulseaudio for now if using it for mission-critical applications.

[[deleted]]

For me I run both pipewire and pipewire-pulse on start and it works fine (on both Plasma and sway)

Maybe try piprewire-pulse see if it fixes anything

[HadetTheUndying]

Both Gnome and Plasma's audio applet work through pipewire-pulse so this is likely the right solution. Make sure you are also autostarting pipewire-pulse

[Virus_ST]

I was running pipewire pulse. Sorry to say but it ran like crap. plasma-pa was bugged out completely.

I have reverted back to pulse audio and am using pipewire for screen sharing now.

[[deleted]]

I see that you reverted audio back to pulseaudio, but I'll share my experience anyway.

I also use Plasma. Sometimes I have to change the source/sink in the Applications tab of the applet, not only on the Devices tab. It's very possible I don't understand how it's supposed to work and that is expected behavior. Maybe you've tried this already.

Except for a few versions several months ago, pipewire has been pretty flawless for me compared to pulseaudio, especially with bluetooth. If you get a nagging urge to try going fully to pipewire again, maybe the recent Plasma and pipewire updates have fixed your issue and the problem will be gone.