PipeWire 1.6.0 (2026-02-19)

This is the 1.6 release that is API and ABI compatible with previous 1.4.x releases.

This release contains some of the bigger changes that happened since the 1.4 release last year, including:

An LDAC decoder was added for bluetooth.
SpanDSP for bluetooth packet loss concealment.
Safe parsing and building of PODs in shared memory.
Added support for metadata features. This is used to signal that the sync_timeline metadata supports the RELEASE operation.
Node commands and events can contain extra user data.
Support for more compressed format helper functions to create and parse formats.
Support for compile time max channels. The max channels was increased to 128.
Support for audio channel layouts was added. This makes it possible to set "audio.layout" = "5.1" instead of the more verbose audio.position = [ FL, FR, FC, LFE, SL, SR ]
Support for Capability Params was added. This can be used to negotiate capabilities on a link before format and buffer negotiation takes place.
More HDR colortypes are added.
Loops now have locking with priority inversion. Most code was adapted to use the faster locks instead of epoll/eventfd to update shared state.
Channel position are parsed from EDID data.
Channel maps are now set on ALSA.
The resampler now supports configurable window functions such as blackman and kaiser windows. The phases are now also calculated with fixed point math, which makes it more accurate.
Many bluetooth updates and improvements.
The filter-graph has an ffmpeg and ONNX plugin. The ffmpeg plugin can run an audio AVFilterGraph. The ONNX plugin can run some models such as the silero VAD.
Many AVB updates. Work is ongoing to merge the Milan protocol.
Support for v0 clients was removed.
The jack-tunnel module can now autoconnect ports.
ROC support multitrack layouts now.
Many RTP updates.
rlimits can now be set in the config file.
Thread reset on fork can now be configured. JACK clients expect this to be disabled.
node.exclusive is now enforced.
node.reliable enables reliable transport.
pw-cat supports sysex and midiclip as well as some more uncompressed formats. Options were added to set the container and codec formats as well as list the supported containers, codecs, layouts and channel names.
Documentation updates.

Highlights (since the previous 1.5.85 prerelease)

Fix a 64 channel limit in the channel mixer.
Fix an fd leak in pulse-server in some error cases.
Some small fixes and improvements.