PipeWire 1.6.1

PipeWire 1.6.1 (2026-03-09)

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

Highlights

• Fix socket activation, which could cause a failure to start PipeWire in some setups.
• Fix crashes in many JACK apps when nodes/ports are quickly added/removed such as when there are notifications (like when changing the volume in KDE).
• Fix playback of encoded formats in pw-cat again.
• Some other smaller fixes and improvements.

Modules

• Fix socket activation. (#5140)
• Remove node.link-group from driver nodes.

SPA

• Fix the libcamera stop sequence.

JACK

• Never return NULL from jack_port_by_id(). (#3512)

GStreamer

• Improve the timestamps on buffers.

Tools

• Fix playback of encoded formats. (#5155)

Suggested patches:

4c2692342efa7852cadd8535548a30745709e083 See #5159