Visual Studio Code: Enable native Wayland support

vscode-wayland.md

Native wayland support is now working consistently for me in VSCode, giving much better text rendering. Unfortunately, it's still hidden behind some command-line flags.

By adding some files to /usr/local/*, you can ensure that VSCode always launches with these flags.

Adding launch flags to VSCode

Assuming that the VSCode launcher is /usr/bin/code-oss (as is the case in Arch):

1. Create /usr/local/bin/code-oss with the following content:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/code-oss --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland "$@"

2. chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/code-oss
3. In /usr/local/share/applications/, create modified versions of any vscode entries in /usr/share/applications/*.desktop, which is where many launchers get their application info. Add the new flags to the Exec= lines, e.g. for Arch:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/share/applications/
for f in code-oss code-oss-url-handler; do
    sed -E 's:^(Exec=[^ ]+)(.*)$:\1 --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland\2:' < /usr/share/applications/$f.desktop | sudo tee /usr/local/share/applications/$f.desktop
done

4. If your distro provides simlinks to the "real" vscode launcher, like code to launch code-oss, override those too:

ln -s /usr/local/bin/code-oss /usr/local/bin/code

Troubleshooting

• restart your application launcher
  • for Gnome: update-desktop-database /usr/local/share/applications
• ensure that your $PATH includes /usr/local/bin somewhere before /usr/bin
• check that /usr/local/bin/code-oss is executable

If you use Fedora or Ubuntu (or really just GNOME in general), I recommend installing Main Menu on flathub. Navigate to Visual Studio Code (or to your favorite alternative, like VSCodium) and edit the command as such:

/usr/share/code/code --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland %F

Apply this to any other entries as well, like the "new window" entry:

/usr/share/code/code --new-window --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland %F

And don't forget to press save.