It is now possible to enable HDR in games without Gamescope.
What you will need:
You will need a Proton version that you can enable the Wayland driver. Proton-CachyOS can do this in either two ways: DISPLAY="" %command% or PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 %command%. I recommend using TKG-Proton. You can download a prebuilt version through Git but you have to sign up for a Git account first. TKG-Proton. Enable the Wayland driver in that version with DISPLAY="" %command%
a. Nvidia users will need to install the vk-hdr-layer. Nvidia’s Vulkan implementation does not yet support passing the color information on its own yet so you will need the layer. Vulkan HDR Layer
b. AMD users will need Mesa 25.1 or greater. The Wayland Color Protocol was merged in 25.1.
Launch commands are needed to enable HDR in the game (Nvidia Only). DXVK_HDR=1 ENABLE_WSI_HDR=1 %command%
Once you have satisfied those 3 conditions, put the parameters in your launch command like below and other commands you wish to pass to the game.
AMD Users do not need this command. Nvidia only!
ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1
DISPLAY="" DXVK_HDR=1 ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 %command%
In KDE Plasma, configure your display settings.
sRGB Color Intensity slider is tied to RGB. At 0%, you have 100% RGB color space, and anything over that will over saturate your colors, which you may or may not like.
SDR Max Brightness slider, I would set this to whatever maximum nits your monitor supports. This usually means setting the slider to 100%.
Brightness slider, I have mine set to 100% but you can set to whatever you like.
To note, Plasma will inverse tone map by default. This means it will convert the image in game to HDR. In some cases, I believe it does a better job than the games implementation but test it out and see which you like best.
Talking to kde developer Zamuunda they said to leave SDR brightness slider alone. You will blow out HDR. For instance my monitor set brightness is 275 nits but it peaks at like 1000. I leave this slider at 275. The slider is labeled oddly and will be chaanged along with an image calibration. Are we on mesa 25.1 yet? Does the same apply to Gnome? Gnome has the same stuff implemented with 48 so I’d assume so?
It doesn’t blow out my HDR. Typically, in games, with it set to the max SDR brightness, you will need to adjust the game’s brightness slider down to zero or close to it. You do the same with having the HDR on in the game settings because the brightness control is for SDR content. Going with the default brightness when you are inverse tone mapping will blow out your HDR for sure.
I think it is on 25.0.x. You can install 25.1 with Octopi.
I have never used Gnome so I can’t speak to it, sorry.
I’m just quoting the guy that designed and coded that slider. It will be changed next KDE iteration because it’s confusing people. If I leave it at the listed SDR nits my monitor has, I can set in game to the correct HDR brightness of my monitor. I don’t have to lower it all the way to a value that doesn’t match. Confused the heck out of me before seeing the discussion on kde discussion forum. It’s not supposed to effect HDR brightness though it does rn. The label should be read literally as SDR brightness as it defines SDR brightness within HDR. You don’t bring it above your monitors listed brightness. Why would you?
It is the brightest value your screen produces in SDR. It by default should be set to your monitors correct value. By all means do what looks good for your case scenario. But as it was described to me it is misleading at and will likely get a new name and.not effect HDR brightness in the future once we see a calibration picture.
OK, I see I think. If I were using my monitor in SDR mode, then I would need to set it to the max brightness to like 265 nits for my monitor. However, I am using HDR mode all the time. When I get home, I will test this at 265 and at 1000 nits and see what the difference is in inverse tone mapping.
For whatever reason, it won’t let me update my post above but this part below is incorrect.
This slider affects HDR in games despite being a SDR setting. Setting this too high will blow out your HDR. This was corrected in 6.4. I recommend setting this to around 200-250 nits maximum.
Any idea how I would go about accomplishing this with Battle.net and Diablo IV? It appears to be working to convert SD->HDR judging from the image I see, but toggling on HDR in-game results in a very washed-out image.
Most of my usage has been having games tonemap SDR->HDR as it looks significantly better on my OLED using your tutorial, but this is my first attempt with a game that supports HDR.
This also goes beyond the scope of this guide, but DualSense works without these launch commands, but putting them in stops it from working in-game. Any idea where I can start looking to resolve it?
I’m using cachyOS proton but it persists with others too.
Do you have the HDR layer installed. I am assuming you are using a Nvidia card. This works only with Wayland. Xwayland does not do HDR and you would have to Gamescope for that.
I’m using these as my launch commands in Steam, with proton-cachyOS (and I’ve also installed proton_tkg_experimental.bleeding.edge.10.0.210318.20250619) and then changed the wayland command to DISPLAY=“”
It’s weird that nothing is throwing errors, or at least nothing obvious when running Steam from a terminal. Using Nvidia drivers and everything is up to date. Going to play around with some things and see if I stumble on a lucky config.