Cocoa-Way – Native macOS Wayland compositor for running Linux apps seamlessly

Native macOS Wayland compositor for running Linux apps seamlessly

True protocol portability: Cocoa-Way rendering Linux apps from OrbStack via Unix sockets.

| Feature | Description | |---|---| 🍎 Native macOS | Metal/OpenGL rendering, seamless desktop integration | 🚀 Zero VM Overhead | Direct Wayland protocol via socket, no virtualization | 📺 HiDPI Ready | Optimized for Retina displays with proper scaling | 🎨 Polished UI | Server-side decorations with shadows and focus indicators | ⚡ Hardware Accelerated | Efficient OpenGL rendering pipeline |

brew tap J-x-Z/tap
brew install cocoa-way waypipe-darwin

Download the latest .dmg

or .zip

from Releases.

# Install dependencies
brew install libxkbcommon pixman pkg-config
# Clone and build
git clone https://github.com/J-x-Z/cocoa-way.git
cd cocoa-way
cargo build --release

⚠️ Required:You must install waypipe-darwin to connect Linux apps.brew tap J-x-Z/tap && brew install waypipe-darwin

**Start the compositor:**cocoa-way

Connect Linux apps via SSH:./run_waypipe.sh ssh user@linux-host firefox

graph LR
subgraph macOS
CW[Cocoa-Way<br/>Compositor]
WP1[waypipe<br/>client]
end
subgraph Linux VM/Container
WP2[waypipe<br/>server]
APP[Linux App<br/>Firefox, etc]
end
APP -->|Wayland Protocol| WP2
WP2 <-->|SSH/Socket| WP1
WP1 -->|Wayland Protocol| CW
CW -->|Metal/OpenGL| Display[macOS Display]

| Solution | Latency | HiDPI | Native Integration | Setup Complexity | |---|---|---|---|---| Cocoa-Way | ⚡ Low | ✅ | ✅ Native windows | 🟢 Easy | | XQuartz | 🐢 High | 🟡 Medium | || | VNC | 🐢 High | ❌ | ❌ Full screen | 🟡 Medium | | VM GUI | 🐢 High | ❌ Separate window | 🔴 Complex |

• macOS backend (Metal/OpenGL)
• Waypipe integration
• HiDPI scaling
• 🚧 Windows backend (win-way)
• 📱 Android NDK backend (planned)
• Multi-monitor support
• Clipboard sync

This project is part of the "Turbo-Charged Protocol Virtualization" research initiative exploring zero-cost cross-platform Wayland via Rust trait monomorphization + SIMD-accelerated pixel conversion.

SSH: "remote port forwarding failed"

A stale socket file exists on the remote host. Our run_waypipe.sh

script handles this automatically with -o StreamLocalBindUnlink=yes

.

If running manually:

waypipe ssh -o StreamLocalBindUnlink=yes user@host ...

Contributions welcome! Please open an issue first to discuss major changes.

GPL-3.0 - Copyright (c) 2024-2025 J-x-Z