How to fix Discord's streaming window not open on Hyprland

The problem

So I hopped in a Discord voicechat to see my friends’ gaming streams. I would like to show them something so I tried to open streaming, but I couldn’t. There was nothing that popped out off my screen after clicking this button:

At that moment, I was using Flatpak Discord. I also installed Vesktop but the problem was also not solved.

Then, I decided to run Vesktop via terminal to see if any logs appeared. Just like what I expected, this was the log I encountered:

[3555:0725/195200.630261:ERROR:third_party/webrtc/modules/desktop_capture/linux/wayland/screen_capture_portal_interface.cc:54] Failed to request session: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Could not activate remote peer 'org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop': startup job failed 
[3555:0725/195200.630284:ERROR:third_party/webrtc/modules/desktop_capture/linux/wayland/base_capturer_pipewire.cc:93] ScreenCastPortal failed: 3 Error during screenshare picker Failed to get sources. 
(node:3555) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: TypeError: Video was requested, but no video stream was provided at VesktopMain:97:5759 
(node:3555) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Unhandled promise rejection. This error originated either by throwing inside of an async function without a catch block, or by rejecting a promise which was not handled with .catch(). To terminate the node process on unhandled promise rejection, use the CLI flag --unhandled-rejections=strict (see https://nodejs.org/api/cli.html#cli_unhandled_rejections_mode). (rejection id: 3

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Explaination

There are three layers involved in this process:

1. Vesktop: The app that you press the “Share” button;

2. xdg-desktop-portal: The “middleman” that pops the “Choose screen” window out for you;

“An XDG Desktop Portal is a program that lets other applications communicate with the compositor through D-Bus.

A portal implements certain functionalities, such as opening file pickers or screen sharing.”

—Hyprland Wiki—

1. graphical-session.target: The sign signals systemd that graphical session is active or not.

NOTE:

• graphical-session.target is useful since some graphical applications such as waybar, polybar, dunst will crash if compositor/window manager (Hyprland, KDE, GNOME) doesn’t finish its startup yet. Compositor can only run after you log in successfully;

• However, only KDE and GNOME automatically activates graphical-session.target, but Hyprland does not.

To see the unit service config file of xdg-desktop-portal, run systemctl --user cat xdg-desktop-portal.service:

❯ systemctl --user cat xdg-desktop-portal.service
# /usr/lib/systemd/user/xdg-desktop-portal.service
[Unit]
Description=Portal service
PartOf=graphical-session.target
Requisite=graphical-session.target
After=graphical-session.target

[Service]
Type=dbus
BusName=org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop
ExecStart=/usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal
Slice=session.slice

Pay attention to Requisite=graphical-session.target. This implies that xdg-desktop-portal.service can run only if graphical-session.target is activated.

[“Warning] The systemd xdg-desktop-portal.service may require an active graphical-session.target, which Hyprland doesn’t start by default. See systemd to set that up.”

—Hyprland Wiki—

Look at the log:

Failed to request session: 
GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Could
not activate remote peer 'org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop': startup
job failed

xdg-desktop-portal, via the alias org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop, couldn’t be activated. Therefore, the culprit should be graphical-session.target.

Use journalctl -xe to confirm the error:

Jul 25 18:10:36 67canyouhelpmerev69 systemd[2050]: graphical-session.target - Current graphical user session is inactive.
...

Based on the result and this piece of note, I can confidently conclude that graphical-session.target’s inactivation is the culprit.

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Solution

1. Setup graphical-session.target (if needed)

• Check your graphical-session.target’s state:

systemctl --user status hyprland-session.target

If it prints out Unit hyprland-session.target could not be found., follow the procedure below. If not, skip to step 2.

• Create file:

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
nano ~/.config/systemd/user/hyprland-session.target

• Inside hyprland-session.target, paste:

[Unit]
Description=Hyprland session
BindsTo=graphical-session.target
Wants=graphical-session-pre.target
After=graphical-session-pre.target
PropagatesStopTo=graphical-session.target

1. Reload systemd user

systemctl --user daemon-reload

1. Activate target and portal

systemctl --user start hyprland-session.target
systemctl --user status graphical-session.target #If "Active: active", proceeds

systemctl --user start xdg-desktop-portal
systemctl --user status xdg-desktop-portal #If "Active: active", you are ready to stream.

1. Setup auto activation

Check if your ~/.config/hypr/conf/autostart.lua has this line or not:

hl.on("hyprland.start", function()
	--Other cmds
	
    hl.exec_cmd("systemctl --user start hyprland-session.target") --This line

	--Other cmds
end)

If not, add it.

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Have fun streaming!