Native Wayland Compositing on Apple Ecosystems: Assessing the Feasibility of “Wawona” Compositor

Authors

• Alex Spaulding, Eastern Washington UniversityFollow

Faculty Mentor

Karen Thurston

Presentation Type

Poster

Primary Discipline of Presentation

Computer Science

Abstract

The Wayland display protocol is the modern standard for Linux window management, emphasizing security, performance, and simplicity. Expanding this ecosystem to macOS, iOS, and Android introduces technical hurdles due to proprietary windowing systems and divergent hardware APIs. This research evaluates the feasibility of developing a native Wayland Compositor for Apple and Android, given the closed nature of these ecosystems.

“Wawona” bridges this gap by architecting a native Wayland Compositor capable of executing unmodified Linux applications. The methodology involves implementing the Wayland protocol stack into native abstractions leveraging Metal, Android’s graphics pipeline, and CoreAnimation.

Comments

Wawona’s mission is to become the standard Wayland compositor for the macOS, iOS, and Android platforms. We are cultivating a vibrant, open-source community focused on high-performance graphics across the Apple and Android ecosystems.

Get involved:
Project Repository: https://github.com/Wawona/Wawona
Project Website: https://wawona.io/

Recommended Citation

Spaulding, Alex. *Native Wayland Compositing on Apple Ecosystems: Assessing the Feasibility of “Wawona” Compositor.* Department of Computer Science, Eastern Washington University, EWU Symposium, 2026.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.