Following the upstream Wayland Protocols repository landing [1]the Wayland color management protocol for enabling HDR support and this morning's release of [2]Wayland Protocols 1.41 , the SDL library and MPV media player are the first two clients supporting this now-official protocol.

Merged earlier today was [3]wayland: Add color manager protocol support for the upstream SDL code, this widely-used library that is commonly deployed by cross-platform games for software/hardware abstractions. SDL is part of the Steam Runtime and an important piece of the overall Linux gaming ecosystem.

Since October the SDL merge request for wp_color_manager_v1 support as opened while finally today it was merged with the release of Wayland Protocols 1.41. The request and merge were managed by developer Frank Praznik as part of the Valve Linux efforts.

Separately, merged today as well was [4]this MPV pull for color management protocol support with the MPV media player. The MPV media player now supports using the upstreamed Wayland color management protocol as part of its HDR content handling.

Great seeing all of the Wayland color management and HDR bits finally coming together for a nice Linux desktop experience in 2025.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wayland-CM-HDR-Merged

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wayland-Protocols-1.41

[3] https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/pull/11192

[4] https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/pull/15720