Likely Regression: Cannot create headless output on v0.50.1

[truemetro]

I am attempting to create a headless output to use with wayvnc in order to utilize a second device as another monitor. I've found that it doesn't appear to be possible to create headless outputs in 0.50.1. Also worth noting, this is my first time trying this type of setup and I'm doing it as a stopgap because one of my monitors broke, so if I'm just doing something wrong or it simply doesn't work this way, my apologies.

Here's the pertinent section of the hyprland.conf

################
### MONITORS ###
################

monitor=HDMI-A-1,1920x1080@60,0x0,1

# Headless source for laptop mirroring.
monitor=HEADLESS-1,2880x1800@60,1920x0,1

And for debugging purposes, here's some system info:

lspci:
28:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Navi 22 [Radeon RX 6700/6700 XT/6750 XT / 6800M/6850M XT] (rev c0)
Subsystem: XFX Limited Device 6710
Kernel driver in use: amdgpu

Hyprland version:
Hyprland 0.50.1 built from branch at commit 4e242d0 ([gha] Nix: update inputs).
Date: Sat Jul 19 21:37:06 2025
Tag: v0.50.1, commits: 6291
built against:
aquamarine 0.9.2
hyprlang 0.6.3
hyprutils 0.8.1
hyprcursor 0.1.12
hyprgraphics 0.1.5

no flags were set

I tried looking at the log to see if there were any errors thrown when using hyprctl keyword to create the output, there weren't. I ran date right before so you can see that the log is from the correct time.

 tobias@archangel ~  date
Sat Aug 9 06:06:15 PM EDT 2025
 tobias@archangel ~  hyprctl keyword monitor "HEADLESS-1,1920x1080@60,1920x0,1"
ok

Log output at the time (from journalctl -f):

Aug 09 17:54:40 archangel rtkit-daemon[1138]: Supervising 3 threads of 2 processes of 1 users.
Aug 09 17:55:10 archangel rtkit-daemon[1138]: Supervising 3 threads of 2 processes of 1 users.
Aug 09 17:55:10 archangel rtkit-daemon[1138]: Supervising 3 threads of 2 processes of 1 users.
Aug 09 17:56:52 archangel rtkit-daemon[1138]: Supervising 3 threads of 2 processes of 1 users.
Aug 09 17:56:52 archangel rtkit-daemon[1138]: Supervising 3 threads of 2 processes of 1 users.
Aug 09 17:59:12 archangel systemd[852]: Stopping Portal service...
Aug 09 17:59:12 archangel systemd[852]: Stopped Portal service.
Aug 09 17:59:18 archangel rtkit-daemon[1138]: Supervising 2 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Aug 09 17:59:18 archangel rtkit-daemon[1138]: Supervising 2 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Aug 09 17:59:18 archangel rtkit-daemon[1138]: Supervising 2 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Aug 09 18:09:04 archangel rtkit-daemon[1138]: Supervising 2 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Aug 09 18:09:04 archangel rtkit-daemon[1138]: Supervising 2 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Aug 09 18:10:45 archangel rtkit-daemon[1138]: Supervising 2 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Aug 09 18:10:45 archangel rtkit-daemon[1138]: Supervising 2 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Aug 09 18:10:45 archangel rtkit-daemon[1138]: Supervising 2 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.

(as a note, I was experimenting to make sure that the correct desktop portal was running, so that's why the log shows the portal shutdown)

As we can see, keyword returns 'ok' but no output is produced in the log, and running hyprctl monitors directly after shows that the HEADLESS-1 output was not created:

 tobias@archangel ~  hyprctl monitors
Monitor HDMI-A-1 (ID 0):
1920x1080@60.00000 at 0x0
description: Acer Technologies SB220Q TERAA0012400
make: Acer Technologies
model: SB220Q
serial: TERAA0012400
active workspace: 1 (1)
special workspace: 0 ()
reserved: 0 34 0 0
scale: 1.00
transform: 0
focused: yes
dpmsStatus: 1
vrr: false
solitary: 0
activelyTearing: false
directScanoutTo: 0
disabled: false
currentFormat: XRGB8888
mirrorOf: none
availableModes: 1920x1080@60.00Hz 1920x1080@60.00Hz 1920x1080@59.94Hz 1680x1050@59.88Hz 1280x1024@60.02Hz 1440x900@59.90Hz 1280x800@59.91Hz 1152x864@75.00Hz 1280x720@60.00Hz 1280x720@60.00Hz 1280x720@59.94Hz 1024x768@70.07Hz 1024x768@60.00Hz 800x600@60.32Hz 800x600@56.25Hz 720x480@60.00Hz 720x480@60.00Hz 720x480@59.94Hz 720x480@59.94Hz 640x480@66.67Hz 640x480@60.00Hz 640x480@59.94Hz 720x400@70.

[Dregu]

The monitor keyword doesn't create headless outputs, it just configures them. See hyprctl output --help for how to manage headless outputs, possibly creating one at start with exec-once...

[truemetro]

Oh! I see. well that makes a lot more sense.