KDE's KWin Merges Wayland Commit-Timing Protocol Support

Merged today to the latest KDE KWin compositor development code is support for Wayland's important commit-timing protocol that is useful for video playback as well as for gamers relying on Adaptive-Sync/FreeSync support.

A half-year ago KDE developer Xaver Hugl opened the pull request to provide commit-timing protocol support for KWin. After a lot of work and accomplishing testing, the code is merged today to KWin. The timing is very important too with the KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta 1 release expected on 10 September and that also marking the Plasma 6.8 branching. So this feature is making it just in time for next month's Plasma 6.8 stable release.

Hugl explained in the commit-timing protocol merge request::

"This protocol allows applications to set the earliest time the compositor should apply the commit. It can be used for example by video players to schedule frames in advance, or to better control the refresh rate with adaptive sync."

In turn the Wayland commit timing support is needed by Mesa Vulkan drivers for supporting the VK_EXT_present_timing extension and in turn important for the likes of VKD3D-Proton with Steam Play.

The protocol is around adding time constraints to Wayland surface updates. Since last year GNOME already supported the commit-timing protocol after it was introduced in Wayland Protocols 1.38 in late 2024.

Great seeing this latest exciting addition make it in time for the super eventful Plasma 6.8.