Smooth transition from Greeter to Session, hide tty flash during login.

[AC17dollars]

Feature Description

When the greeter login completes, the transition to the session compositor should be seamless. Currently, the greeter compositor exits and the user sees raw TTY output briefly before the session compositor starts. This breaks immersion and looks unpolished.

The feature would hide terminal/tty messages completely (or show loading screen or not kill the greeter compositor until session compositor starts), making the switch feel like a smooth graphical handoff.

Use Case

When a user logs in through the greetd greeter, it would be ideal to have a smooth, fully graphical transition directly into the session, without any terminal messages appearing in between.

Compositor

Is this feature specific to one compositor?

• [x] All compositors
• [ ] niri
• [ ] Hyprland

Proposed Solution

Add a handoff mechanism so the greeter compositor can directly transfer control to the session compositor, without dropping back to a visible TTY. Options might include:

1. Running the session compositor on a new VT and switching only when it’s ready, while the greeter compositor displays a “loading” screen in the meantime.

2. Having greetd support a splash/placeholder surface that stays visible until the session compositor has drawn its first frame.

3. Letting the greeter compositor chain-exec into the session compositor process instead of exiting to shell.

Alternatives/Existing Solutions

In GNOME/KDE Plasma with GDM or SDDM, there is no tty flash.

[AC17dollars]

@Purian23 this isn't planned or is this moved elsewhere?

[Purian23]

Oops, I actually didn't plan to close this one yet. No solution in place just yet.