• By: Andrew M McCall
• Published: January 25, 2026
• Updated: January 25, 2026

What I did To Solve The Problem

1. sudo pacman -S nvidia-open-dkms nvidia-utils nvidia-settings nvidia-prime linux-headers
2. add nvidia-drm.modeset=1 at /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf at the end of my options list
3. while you are there you might as well add i915.enable_psr=0 to solve any built-in display flickering
4. sudo mkinitcpio -P
5. Open up a terminal and run: ls -l /sys/class/drm/renderD*/device/driver
6. In my case my Nvidia device is: lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 24 08:58 /sys/class/drm/renderD129/device/driver -> ../../../../bus/pci/drivers/nvidia
7. Open up ~/.config/niri/config.kjl with vim
8. Minimal Niri Debug Config For OBS Studio update your niri config from the codeblock below
9. This tells Niri to use the Nvidia device as the primary rendering device.
10. Don’t forget to install PipeWire: sudo pacman -S pipewire wireplumber pipewire-pulse
11. systemctl --user disable --now pulseaudio.service pulseaudio.socket
12. systemctl --user enable --now pipewire.service pipewire-pulse.service wireplumber.service
13. reboot

Minimal Niri Debug Config

debug {
   10   render-drm-device "/dev/dri/renderD129"
   11   honor-xdg-activation-with-invalid-serial
   12   wait-for-frame-completion-before-queueing
   13 }
   14

Introducing my problem with OBS Studio, Pipewire, Arch, Wayland, Niri, and Dual Intel/Nvidia GPU

I recently did a fresh install of Arch Linux using the Wayland Protocol, Niri as the Window Compositor. This is on a 10th generation Intel i7 cpu with an iGPU as well as a dedicated Nvidia GPU.

The GPU in question is a Quadro T1000 so still relatively recent.

Unfortunately, when I tried to use OBS-Studio with Pipwire all I could get OBS to “capture” was a blank screen.

Here are my reflections and attempt to consolidate a couple of different sources on how I fixed the problem in hopes it may help myself or someone later.

The Problem with OBS Studio, Wayland, and Dual Intel/Nvidia GPU

Pipewire: Nvidia fails to import linear buffers

In my experience, by default, when an integrated Intel GPU is present, as well as a dedicated GPU, Niri defaults to the Intel GPU as the render device. This is fine for most cases. But for whatever reason, caused issues on my Lenovo P15 Gen1 running dual GPUs.

Niri Specific Issues Related To OBS Screencasting

Niri is using your iGPU for rendering and obs is using your Nvidia gpu. This explains why the initial set of modifiers consists of the linear and the invalid modifier. It is clear that it is this way and not the other way around because niri successfully uses GBM to allocate a linear buffer with the rendering usage, which would fail on Nvidia. Obs is unable to import the linear buffer because obs imports pipewire buffers as GL_TEXTURE_2D, but linear images are external only on nvidia. Obs is unable to import the buffer with invalid modifier because either Intel allocates such buffers as linear or because Nvidia is unable to handle the invalid modifier in cross device scenarios.

Source: ScreenCast shows window selection but only black screen (OBS Mainly)

If we run NVTOP we can see what is going on:

579945 andrew   0  Graphic N/A     638MiB  16%     2%    582MiB qs -c noctalia-shell
577849 andrew   0  Graphic N/A     408MiB  10%    16%    477MiB /usr/bin/niri --sess
675905 andrew   0  Graphic N/A     215MiB   5%     0%    691MiB /usr/lib/firefox/fir
639305 andrew   0  Graphic N/A     103MiB   3%     0%    462MiB /opt/helium-browser-
577849 andrew   1  Graphic   1%     86MiB   0%     0%    477MiB /usr/bin/niri --sess
651042 andrew   0  Graphic N/A      40MiB   1%     0%    285MiB alacritty

In my case, I have already fixed the problem, but previously, everything was using 1 as the render device.

The solution that worked for me is further down in this thread:

Any of the following would solve this

   - run niri on the Nvidia gpu (this is the one OP wants)
   - run obs on the igpu
   - make obs import linear buffers as GL_TEXTURE_EXTERNAL_OES. This also requires separate shaders
   - make obs switch to a rendering technology for this millennium (vulkan) that doesn't require hacks like GL_TEXTURE_EXTERNAL_OES

What the fix was for me

The problem is that Niri is using the iGPU. By setting the render device in niri config, we can fix the issue.

First, I opened up a terminal and ran:

ls -l /sys/class/drm/renderD*/device/driver
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 25 11:35 /sys/class/drm/renderD128/device/driver -> ../../../bus/pci/drivers/i915
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 25 11:35 /sys/class/drm/renderD129/device/driver -> ../../../../bus/pci/drivers/nvidia

Then I updated my Niri Config Debug section:

 debug {
   10   render-drm-device "/dev/dri/renderD129"
   11   honor-xdg-activation-with-invalid-serial
   12   wait-for-frame-completion-before-queueing
   13 }

Once I did that, I was able to use Pipewire to successfully capture my screen on my integrated panel as well as my desktop monitors.