Visual Studio Code: Enable native Wayland support

vscode-wayland.md

Native wayland support is now working consistently for me in VSCode, giving much better text rendering. Unfortunately, it's still hidden behind some command-line flags.

By adding some files to /usr/local/*, you can ensure that VSCode always launches with these flags.

Adding launch flags to VSCode

Assuming that the VSCode launcher is /usr/bin/code-oss (as is the case in Arch):

1. Create /usr/local/bin/code-oss with the following content:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/code-oss --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland "$@"

2. chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/code-oss
3. In /usr/local/share/applications/, create modified versions of any vscode entries in /usr/share/applications/*.desktop, which is where many launchers get their application info. Add the new flags to the Exec= lines, e.g. for Arch:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/share/applications/
for f in code-oss code-oss-url-handler; do
    sed -E 's:^(Exec=[^ ]+)(.*)$:\1 --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland\2:' < /usr/share/applications/$f.desktop | sudo tee /usr/local/share/applications/$f.desktop
done

4. If your distro provides simlinks to the "real" vscode launcher, like code to launch code-oss, override those too:

ln -s /usr/local/bin/code-oss /usr/local/bin/code

Troubleshooting

• restart your application launcher
  • for Gnome: update-desktop-database /usr/local/share/applications
• ensure that your $PATH includes /usr/local/bin somewhere before /usr/bin
• check that /usr/local/bin/code-oss is executable

Interestingly, this is heavily dependant on fractional scaling.
On my 2560x1600 screen, at 150% fractional scaling (and most fractional scales really), this change absolutely destroys the text clarity.
However, at 145% fractional scaling, it is almost on par with X11 in text clarity, only slightly worse with very small text that I wouldn't use anyway. So I'll be using this fix and 145% scale from now on.
Just a very weird behaviour, especially since X11 is very clear at all scales, and definitely check with your settings carefully if this actually improves anything.