Hypridle activating its timeout commands effecting other tty session

Bugs / FRs / Support
, ,
1
Hyprland version 
Hyprland 0.51.1 built from branch  at commit 71a1216abcc7031776630a6d88f105605c4dc1c9  ([gha] Nix: update inputs).
Date: Mon Sep 22 20:54:03 2025
Tag: v0.51.1, commits: 6436
built against:
 aquamarine 0.9.5
 hyprlang 0.6.3
 hyprutils 0.10.0
 hyprcursor 0.1.13
 hyprgraphics 0.2.0


no flags were set

Describe your issue / feature…

Hyprland running on tty1, i switch to tty2 and use kde/cage after few minutes my screen brightness lowers because hypridle triggers its idle timeout and runs a command to lower screen brightness.

But this bug dosen’t happen other way around, that is using kde and switching to hyprland session and kde lowering screen brightness due to inactivity.

2

that’s actually likely a hyprland issue. I’m surprised we even can affect the DRM state while being on a separate tty, unbound.

3

should i create a discussion or github issue regarding this. Or is there already one?

4

oh, wait, you are using brightnessctl? Hm, this is unlikely to be really solvable. That’s a separate app, if it uses some underlying kernel infra you can’t do much other than killing it.

5

yes, brightnessctl is getting triggered on timout, i picked the config from hyprland example config.

6

i tried running sleep 5; brightnessctl set 5% in niri and then switching to hyprland. This is the output →

Failed to set brightness: Operation not permitted

whereas doing sleep 5; brightnessctl set 5% in hyprland and then switching to niri, this is the output →

Updated device 'intel_backlight':
Device 'intel_backlight' of class 'backlight':
	Current brightness: 1200 (5%)
	Max brightness: 24000
7

@vaxry would take a look at the previous message.

8

I am unsure why this would happen. I don’t think brightnessctl uses anything within hyprland to adjust brightness.

9

can someone try the above behaviour on there system. If it’s same, i will ask dev of brightnessctl.

10

I tried this on my laptop and I get “operation not permitted”.

11

It has something to with my user permission, as i tried this on two seprate accounts and this erroneous behaviour didn’t appear there.

12

Which distro did you tested this on ?

13

Arch linux, both my desktop and laptop

14

found the solution, this buggy behaviour war because of my user being in `video` group.