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Hide Desktop
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2025 2:51 pm
by AlexThum
Hello everyone,
I’m currently working on a Raspberry Pi project and want to automatically start HUDIY. My goals are:
- The Pi should launch HUDIY immediately after boot.
- No desktop environment should appear, because now the desktop will flash shortly and then hudiy will start.
- The mouse cursor should be invisible.
My questions:
- How can I completely skip the desktop, so only runs HUDIY?
- How can I make the mouse cursor invisible?
- What’s a stable way to launch HUDIY in kiosk mode directly at boot, without the desktop flashing?
Re: Hide Desktop
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2025 3:25 pm
by hudiy
Hello,
Raspberry Pi desktop (pcmanfm) and the taskbar (wf-panel-pi) are launched from /etc/xdg/labwc/autostart. You can remove the lines that launch them from the file.
kanshi is still needed to manage connected displays but it does not have any UI.
If you observe desktop flashing between the splash and Hudiy startup, you can set additional delay for which the splash application will remain active. It is described in the docs at
https://github.com/wiboma/hudiy/blob/ma ... .md#splash
Hudiy and splash by default hide the mouse cursor but labwc may leave its own life. On the latest Raspberry Pi OS, labwc introduced new action to hide and warp mouse cursor for selected window (
https://github.com/labwc/labwc/pull/2633).
It can be added to $HOME/.config/labwc/rc.xml like:
Code: Select all
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<openbox_config xmlns="http://openbox.org/3.4/rc">
<windowRules>
<windowRule identifier="hudiy">
<action name="HideCursor" />
<action name="WarpCursor" x="-1" y="-1" />
</windowRule>
<windowRule identifier="splash">
<action name="HideCursor" />
<action name="WarpCursor" x="-1" y="-1" />
</windowRule>
</windowRules>
</openbox_config>
Re: Hide Desktop
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2025 5:18 pm
by alex124.rh
Hi there, for me the flash is before the splash, it’s black then a desktop flash then the splash
Re: Hide Desktop
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2025 5:33 pm
by hudiy
alex124.rh wrote: Fri Sep 26, 2025 5:18 pm
Hi there, for me the flash is before the splash, it’s black then a desktop flash then the splash
In that case you can move running Hudiy in /etc/xdg/labwc before the pcmanfm.
Re: Hide Desktop
Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2025 2:34 am
by wkl3968
It works by changing the hudiy and pcmanfm sequence as suggested
Re: Hide Desktop
Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:57 pm
by AlexThum
Can you make that for the next release that hudiy skips the desktop and the cursor and that it will start directly in kiosk mode?
Because when i start the Pi the desktop and the cursor will flash shrtly and then hudiy starts.
Re: Hide Desktop
Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2025 6:43 pm
by hudiy
AlexThum wrote: Wed Oct 01, 2025 5:57 pm
Can you make that for the next release that hudiy skips the desktop and the cursor and that it will start directly in kiosk mode?
Because when i start the Pi the desktop and the cursor will flash shrtly and then hudiy starts.
Some users need a working desktop environment to perform initial setup of their installation. We also try to make as few system changes as possible during Hudiy installation. This makes updates easier and allows smooth migration to newer versions of Raspberry Pi OS. You can easily disable loading the taskbar and desktop yourself, as described in the post
viewtopic.php?p=453#p453 (just remove them from etc/xdg/labwc/autostart).
If the desktop is visible between the splash screen and Hudiy loading, you can use the --delay switch in Splash to delay quitting the splash application:
https://github.com/wiboma/hudiy?tab=rea ... ile#splash
Re: Hide Desktop
Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2026 8:48 pm
by proteinklumpen
Hey,
because of a touchscreen Issue I had, which wasn't possible to be solved using labwc, I switched to openbox as a window manager and x11. Can you tell me how I can achive this here? The labwc autostart is probably not going to be used in my case anymore
Thanks in advance
Re: Hide Desktop
Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2026 10:02 pm
by hudiy
proteinklumpen wrote: Thu Jan 01, 2026 8:48 pm
Hey,
because of a touchscreen Issue I had, which wasn't possible to be solved using labwc, I switched to openbox as a window manager and x11. Can you tell me how I can achive this here? The labwc autostart is probably not going to be used in my case anymore
Thanks in advance
Looks like for X11 the equivalent is
/etc/xdg/lxsession/rpd-x/autostart (Trixie).