protonscr

Unable to open a connection to X [Niri]

steamclosed Window managerDistro Family: Arch
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#12549 · opened 2025-12-13 by karywina · updated 2026-06-04 · 2 comments · github
Kkarywina 2025-12-13 github

Your system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): Latest one available as I'm writing this
  • Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Arch Linux (used archinstall)
  • Opted into Steam client beta?: No
  • Have you checked for system updates?: No
  • Steam Logs: how do i put them all here
  • GPU: Intel Alder Lake iGPU

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

                                                             **Unable to open a connection to X**

When launching Steam on Niri it hits me with an error saying: Check your DISPLAY environment variable and make sure that you have enabled X.
If you are running remotely, make sure that you have a remote connection which will allow an X connection.

For more information visit https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4050-WOJB-0608

This is only happening on Niri, every other wayland/x11 DE/WM works fine. I do not have xwayland if that's an issue (other thread I saw had this as the fix.) yeah i jus want to play adofai

Steps for reproducing this issue:

  1. Launch Steam
Kkisak-valve maintainer 2025-12-13 github

Hello @karywina, it appears you've already have an answer to this. Yes, the desktop environment does need to work with X11 one way or another to work with Steam.

11vybridge 2026-06-04 github

Installing xwayland-satellite and restarting Niri fixed this for me!

https://niri-wm.github.io/niri/Important-Software.html#xwayland

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