phosh(1)

phosh1

Phosh - a phone shell

Usage

phosh [OPTIONS...]

Overview

phosh is a Wayland shell for mobile devices using GNOME technologies.

Options

-h, --help

Print help and exit

-U, --unlocked

Don't start with screen locked

-L, --locked

Start with screen locked, no matter what

--version

Show version information

Configuration

phosh is configured via GSettings, see phosh-config(5).

Plugins

Plugins are configured via the mobi.phosh.plugins and sm.puri.phosh.plugins gsettings schema. The lock-screen key enables the plugins on the lock screen e.g.

gsettings set  sm.puri.phosh.plugins lock-screen "['ticket-box', 'upcoming-events']"

Dbus interface

phosh allows to enable and disable certain debug flags at runtime via DBus. To see a list of available flags use:

busctl --user introspect mobi.phosh.Shell.DebugControl /mobi/phosh/Shell/DebugControl mobi.phosh.Shell.DebugControl

To toggle individual values:

busctl --user set-property mobi.phosh.Shell.DebugControl /mobi/phosh/Shell/DebugControl mobi.phosh.Shell.DebugControl LogDomains as 2 phosh-shell phosh-brightness-manager

Note that the flags are not considered stable API so can change between releases.

Environment

phosh honors the following environment variables for debugging purposes:

•

PHOSH_DEBUG: A comma separated list of flags:

•

always-splash: Always use splash screen when starting apps (even when in docked mode)

•

app-activation: Use longer timeout before force-closing the app splash. Enable this flag to help debug activation issues.

•

backlight-non-linear: Assume backlight brightness changes non-linear. Set if kernel should report the backlight as non-linear but doesn't.

•

fake-builtin: Fake a builtin screen when using a virtual output like in a nested Wayland session.

•

thumbnail-overlay: Use animated transition between overlay and running app. This will default to on in future releases.

•

PHOSH_FAKE_CLOCK: Allowed values are ISO8601 formatted strings or now. Setting this variable sets the shell's clocs to the given fixed value. For the clock format see g_date_time_new_from_iso8601().

•

G_MESSAGES_DEBUG, G_DEBUG and other environment variables supported by glib. <https://docs.gtk.org/glib/running.html>

•

GTK_DEBUG and other environment variables supported by GTK, see <https://docs.gtk.org/gtk3/running.html>

Releases

3 releases since Debian 12 (Bookworm); the text changed 2 times.

  1. 12
  2. 13
  3. Arch

From phosh 0.57.0-2 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.