PipeWire Media Session is the reference/example session manager provided by the PipeWire project.On startup, Media Session reads the media-session.conf configuration file to configure itself. The following directories are searched for this file:

in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pipewire/media-session.d/ (usually $HOME/.config/pipewire/media-session.d/)
$sysconfdir/pipewire/media-session.d (usually /etc/pipewire/media-session.d/)
$datadir/pipewire/media-session.d/ (usually /usr/share/pipewire/media-session.d/)

The environment variable MEDIA_SESSION_CONFIG_DIR can be used to specify an alternative config directory.

Access management

The Media Session Module: Access Flatpak module handles clients that have PW_KEY_ACCESS set to "flatpak". Other clients are ignored.

The module sets the permissions of all objects to RX. This limits the flatpaks from doing modifications to other objects.

Because this will also set the core object permission R, the client will resume with the new permissions.

pipewire-media-session implements PW_KEY_MEDIA_CATEGORY type "Manager" applications by simply setting the client permissions to ALL. No additional checks are performed yet.

Modules

List of Media Session modules: