Use a DisplayLink USB dock or hub (Plugable, StarTech, Dell, Lenovo, and others) as extra monitors on Omarchy: Arch Linux + Hyprland, including NVIDIA and Wayland.
If your DisplayLink screens show no signal, stay at 0x0, or Hyprland logs drmPrimeFDToHandle failed / Buffer failed to import to KMS, this project is for you.
Status: experimental. The scripts are verified end to end on one machine (see Tested hardware). The plugin's guided setup has been walked through in its demo mode and the bar card used on that machine, but has not yet been run on a machine without the driver. AMD and Intel should need less and are expected to work, but nobody has run them yet. Reports from other setups are welcome.
This is an independent community project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Omarchy, Hyprland, Synaptics/DisplayLink, or any dock vendor.
BASH · Install current upstream
omarchy plugin add https://github.com/bmaltais/OmaDisplayLink.git --enableThen click the new D icon in the bar and choose Set up DisplayLink. Step-by-step with screenshots, or the command-line route if you would rather not use the plugin.
DisplayLink docks are not ordinary USB-C or DisplayPort docks. They send video over USB and need the evdi kernel module plus the proprietary DisplayLink userspace driver, and Hyprland has to be told how to use the resulting virtual screens. OmaDisplayLink does all of that for you:
- A bar icon and a card that say whether the dock is working and offer the one thing to do next: set up, log out to finish, repair, reinstall or uninstall.
- Guided setup in a visible terminal: numbered steps, a plain-language line for each, and a question before anything changes.
- On NVIDIA, a patched Aquamarine (Hyprland's backend library) with the CPU-copy fallback from hyprwm/aquamarine#279, because stock Aquamarine cannot drive evdi outputs on NVIDIA. An update hook re-applies it after
omarchy update. The build uses Arch's packaging source only if its release tag is PGP-signed by a key inarchlinux-keyring. - A full undo, a diagnostic report you can paste into an issue, and a benchmark of what the DisplayLink path costs.
Everything is a plain shell script you can read, and every change has a documented undo.
You do not need to use a terminal for most of this. The plugin puts an icon in your bar; its card walks you through the rest. (Prefer the command line? See Manual install.)
The screenshots below come from the plugin's demo mode, which asks the real questions and simulates the steps, so nothing was installed to take them. A real run takes a few minutes longer and may ask for your password.
omarchy plugin add https://github.com/bmaltais/OmaDisplayLink.git --enableOmarchy warns that plugins run unsandboxed inside your shell and asks you to confirm; read the code first if you like, it is all in this repo. If it asks which part of the bar the icon should go in, the default (right) is fine. A dim "D" appears in the bar.
The card says what state things are in and offers the one thing to do. Nothing is installed yet, so that is setup.
A terminal opens in Omarchy's style. First it says what it is about to do and asks for a go-ahead. You can stop at any prompt, and nothing has changed until you answer yes.
Then it offers a system snapshot, which lets you roll the whole machine back if something goes wrong. It takes a few seconds and is worth saying yes to.
Where a step needs administrator rights, the terminal asks for your password.
Each step has a title, a line saying what it does, and a check mark when it is done. If a step fails it stops, says which one, and tells you how to ask for help.
| Step | What it does | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Check this machine | Looks at your GPU, dock and kernel headers. Changes nothing | seconds |
| 2. Snapshot | The optional system snapshot | seconds |
| 3. Check build tools and helpers | Installs anything missing that the next steps need (on stock Omarchy usually cmake, hyprwayland-scanner, usbutils) |
seconds |
| 4. Install the driver | Builds evdi-dkms (a kernel module) and installs displaylink from the AUR, then enables the service |
a minute or two |
| 5. Configure Hyprland and the system | Stable GPU names, early loading of evdi, the Hyprland environment block, monitor entries for the dock | seconds |
| 6. Build the NVIDIA fix | NVIDIA only. Builds a patched Aquamarine and installs the update hook that keeps it patched | a few minutes |
| 7. Finish | Marks setup as waiting for a login | seconds |
On AMD or Intel there is no step 6, so setup has six steps.
On most machines the dock only starts working after a fresh login, because Hyprland reads its graphics settings once at startup. If the dock screens are already lit when setup finishes (this can happen on Intel and AMD), setup says so, skips the logout question and the icon goes straight to Working; the new settings are still read at your next login. Otherwise the last question offers to log you out for you; save your work first. Plug the dock into a USB 3 / SuperSpeed port, and have it attached when you log back in.
If you answer No, nothing is lost: the icon stays on Log out to finish, and the card keeps a Log out now button until you have logged in again.
Back in your session, the icon is blue and the card says how many dock screens are active. There is nothing left to do, so the card has no big button.
The icon tells you the state without opening anything:
If it turns orange or red, open the card: it says in a sentence what is wrong and offers the fix when there is one (for example Repair the NVIDIA fix after an update, or Reinstall after a kernel update). Copy report puts a sanitized report on your clipboard to paste into a GitHub issue. If a screen shows "no signal" while the card says it is active, check the monitor's input source and cable first.
The card's Maintenance row has Reinstall (rebuilds the evdi module and restarts the service, for after a kernel update) and Uninstall (removes the driver and everything setup added). Both open a terminal, list what they will do, and ask first. Uninstall leaves your monitors.lua alone.
Not using the plugin, or want to script it? The same scripts, step by step, with --preview on everything: docs/manual-install.md.
| Dock | Plugable UD-3900PDZ (triple HDMI, two DisplayLink heads) |
| GPU | NVIDIA RTX 3090 (nvidia-open) |
| Software | Omarchy, Hyprland 0.56.2, Aquamarine 0.15.1, evdi 1.15.1, displaylink 6.4 |
| Link | USB 2 (480M) |
| Result | Two dock screens plus a native screen, replug and mode changes work |
Cost on that machine: about 1.4% of one core for Hyprland when idle, and 73–82% in a deliberately harsh worst case (a 900x600 terminal printing continuously while jumping across the screens). See Measure the cost. Others in the Aquamarine PR thread report it working on an RTX 5070 and an RTX 2080 Ti with an Elgato Prompter.
Have a different dock or GPU? Run ./scripts/displaylink-detect.sh --sanitize and open an issue with the result and whether it worked.
Search-engine-friendly list of what people actually see:
- DisplayLink monitor shows no signal / black screen on Hyprland or Omarchy
hyprctl monitorslistsDVI-I-1/DVI-I-2but at 0x0 or disableddrm: drmPrimeFDToHandle failed,Buffer failed to import to KMS- DisplayLink works on Windows but not on Omarchy / Arch Linux / Wayland
- evdi on NVIDIA with Wayland produces no output (works on X11 or on AMD/Intel)
- Screens vanish after
omarchy update(a new Aquamarine dropped the patch): the update hook handles this AQ_NO_MODIFIERS=1"fixes" the dock but greys out your main monitors (not needed here; the patch is the real fix)
Also check your monitor's input source before debugging further: a healthy dock output can look like "no signal" if the monitor is set to another input.
- evdi creates virtual DRM cards that the DisplayLink service feeds with frames over USB.
- udev rules give those cards and your real GPU stable names so
AQ_DRM_DEVICESnever points at the wrong device. - Hyprland (through Aquamarine) renders on the real GPU and hands finished frames to evdi. On AMD and Intel that import works. On NVIDIA the driver refuses to share its buffers with evdi, so the patched Aquamarine reads the frame back and copies it into a plain buffer instead. That costs CPU, which is why heavy motion is the expensive case.
displaylink-aquamarine-patch.sh --statusprintspatchedorstock.- The hook runs after every
omarchy update: it does nothing unless Hyprland renders on NVIDIA and the library lost the fix, then rebuilds, verifies the build really carries the fix, installs it, and notifies you. If the patch stops applying, you get a notification and the system package is left alone. - After a kernel update, if the dock stops working, the card says the evdi module is missing and offers Reinstall (command line:
./scripts/displaylink-rebuild.sh). - Once upstream merges the fix and Arch ships it, remove the hook and use the stock package (steps in the guide).
Use Uninstall in the card's Maintenance row, or from a terminal:
./scripts/displaylink-uninstall.sh --preview # what it would do, nothing changed
./scripts/displaylink-uninstall.sh # step by step, after a confirmationIt stops the service, removes the setup files, the Hyprland environment block and the update hook, puts the stock Aquamarine back if the patched one is installed, and removes the packages. Your monitors.lua is left alone. The manual steps are in docs/displaylink.md.
Reports, hardware results and pull requests are welcome. Keep everything public-safe: no hostnames, serials, MAC addresses, home paths or unsanitized hyprctl output. See AGENTS.md. Working on the plugin itself, including the demo mode used for the screenshots: docs/development.md.
The CPU-copy fallback is based on the work of the author of hyprwm/aquamarine#279, adapted here to Aquamarine 0.15.1. Thanks to the Hyprland, Aquamarine, evdi and Omarchy projects.
DisplayLink Omarchy, DisplayLink Hyprland, DisplayLink Arch Linux, DisplayLink Wayland, DisplayLink NVIDIA Linux, evdi Hyprland, evdi NVIDIA Wayland, USB graphics adapter Linux, Plugable UD-3900PDZ Linux, triple monitor USB dock Linux, Aquamarine evdi.
MIT. The bundled Aquamarine patch is a derivative of Aquamarine (BSD-3-Clause); the displaylink driver is proprietary and installed from the AUR under its own license.