Discord details Linux improvements: Wayland screen sharing, Steam Deck video, per-app audio coming

Discord has published a summary of its Linux-focused engineering work over the past year, signaling sustained investment in the platform rather than one-off fixes. The company deployed a distribution-agnostic automatic updater to eliminate manual re-downloads, improved Wayland support for Go Live screen sharing, and added keybind functionality for push-to-talk when Discord lacks window focus. Live video now functions on Steam Deck as well.

Looking forward, Discord is collaborating with Igalia again to address a long-standing Linux limitation: binary all-or-nothing audio capture during screen sharing. The team is implementing per-app audio selection in xdg-desktop-portal and directly contributing the feature to GNOME and KDE Plasma to accelerate adoption across desktop environments.

What changed and what's in progress for Discord on Linux

• Automatic updater: Replaced manual download workflow with a cross-distribution updater that handles installation without user intervention.
• Wayland Go Live and keybinds: Added screen sharing support under Wayland compositors and enabled global push-to-talk keybinds that function when Discord is not the focused window.
• Steam Deck video support: Enabled live video streaming on Steam Deck hardware, expanding compatibility with Valve's handheld Linux platform.
• Per-app audio sharing (in development): Working with Igalia to extend xdg-desktop-portal with per-application audio capture, moving beyond the current all-or-nothing PulseAudio/PipeWire capture model.
• Direct desktop environment contributions: Discord engineers are implementing the portal support directly in GNOME and KDE to reduce time-to-availability for users.

Why it matters

Discord's upstream contributions to xdg-desktop-portal, GNOME, and KDE for per-app audio sharing will benefit the entire Linux screen sharing ecosystem, not just Discord users. For Steam Deck and desktop Linux gamers, this addresses a practical pain point where streaming or co-op sessions currently force broadcast of all system audio.