xdg-portal

Recipe card from the charly-selkies plugin (Images — the deployable catalog).

xdg-portal - XDG Desktop Portal Infrastructure

Overview

Provides XDG Desktop Portal support for Sway containers. Installs the portal daemon, the wlroots-specific backend (xdg-desktop-portal-wlr), and the GTK fallback backend. Enables screen sharing, screenshots via portal API, and file dialogs for applications running inside the container.

Candy Definition

require:
  - dbus
  - sway
  - pipewire

env:
  XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP: "sway"

rpm:
  packages:
    - xdg-desktop-portal
    - xdg-desktop-portal-wlr
    - xdg-desktop-portal-gtk
    - slurp

Key Properties

Property	Value
Depends	`dbus`, `sway`, `pipewire`
Packages	`xdg-desktop-portal`, `xdg-desktop-portal-wlr`, `xdg-desktop-portal-gtk`, `slurp`
Env	`XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway`
Service	None (D-Bus activation on demand)
Ports	None

How It Works

D-Bus activation: Portal daemons start on-demand when an application calls a portal D-Bus method. No supervisord service needed.
Sway config drop-in: Installs ~/.config/sway/config.d/portal.conf which runs dbus-update-activation-environment to export WAYLAND_DISPLAY, XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP, and SWAYSOCK to the D-Bus activation environment. Without this, portal daemons can’t find the Wayland display.
Auto-approve config: Installs ~/.config/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr/config with chooser_type=none for headless automation (no user dialog for screen sharing).

Portal Capabilities

Interface	Backend	Status
Screenshot	xdg-desktop-portal-wlr	Supported
ScreenCast (PipeWire)	xdg-desktop-portal-wlr	Supported
RemoteDesktop	—	NOT supported on wlroots
File dialogs	xdg-desktop-portal-gtk	Supported (fallback)
Settings	xdg-desktop-portal-gtk	Supported (fallback)

Included In

sway-desktop metalayer (default for all desktop boxes)

Used In Boxes

/charly-selkies:sway-browser-vnc (via sway-desktop metalayer)

Cross-References

/charly-selkies:sway-desktop — Desktop metalayer that includes this candy
/charly-infrastructure:dbus-layer — D-Bus session bus (required dependency)
/charly-selkies:pipewire — PipeWire (required for ScreenCast)
/charly-selkies:sway — Sway compositor (required)

/charly-image:layer — candy authoring reference (charly.yml schema, task verbs, service declarations)
/charly-check:check — declarative testing (check: block, charly check box, charly check live)