JetBrains has announced its decision to enable support for the Wayland protocol by default in integrated development environments based on the upcoming release of IntelliJ 2026.1. The company is paving the way for this transition by allowing users to test Wayland support in the EAP builds of IntelliJ IDEA. This means that IDEs based on IntelliJ will now be able to run directly on Wayland-based desktop environments without the need for XWayland. While support for the XToolkit backend for X11 will still be available as an option.
Since the last testing of direct compatibility with Wayland in 2024, JetBrains has made significant improvements to the stability and functionality of running on various composite servers. This includes added features like drag-and-drop support, input method support, and more natural-looking window decorations. Some differences in behavior compared to X11-based environments have been noted, such as the lack of window centering or restoration of previous window positions, limitations on moving pop-up windows outside the main window, and some inconsistencies in window decoration elements with the active desktop theme.
The WLToolkit backend, developed for IntelliJ Wayland, is now open source under the GPLv2 license and included in JetBrainsRuntime, the company’s edited version of OpenJDK. This backend may eventually be integrated into the mainstream OpenJDK. In addition to this development, JetBrains is actively involved in the Wakefield project, which aims to develop components for Wayland support in OpenJDK. This collaboration will allow users to directly run graphical Java applications in Wayland-based environments.