How to Fix Mouse Not Being Captured in Games Running with Gamescope on KDE Plasma Wayland?

Question

PixelPulse_93X - April 16, 2025

I’m using Endeavour OS with KDE Plasma on Wayland and trying to run games like Ghost of Tsushima and Cyberpunk 2077 through Gamescope to enable HDR. However, my mouse isn’t being confined to the game window and can move to other monitors. I tried the –force-grab-cursor option along with several other launch flags, but mouse capture isn’t working as expected. Interestingly, when I run the games without Gamescope, mouse capture works fine, and I don’t recall having this issue when testing with GNOME on Wayland. My setup includes an Nvidia 3080ti GPU, AMD 5800x3D CPU, and I’m running Proton GE 9-27. Here’s my latest launch command: gamescope -H 1440 -W 3440 -r 240 -f -O DP-1 –adaptive-sync –hdr-enabled –force-grab-cursor –mangoapp — %command%. Any ideas on how to get the mouse properly captured when running Gamescope on KDE Plasma with Wayland?

4 Answers

Answer 1 · 2025-04-17 15:44:26

You might want to check out the related GitHub issues on the Gamescope repository. Some users have shared additional fixes and workarounds there that might be helpful for your specific case without downgrading. Keeping an eye on updates could also help since this seems actively worked on.

Answer 2 · 2025-04-17 13:13:15

It might help to simplify your gamescope command to just “gamescope –force-grab-cursor — %command%” and then gradually add other options. This way you can pinpoint if any flag is causing the mouse capture problem.

Answer 3 · 2025-04-16 20:12:12

The issue you’re experiencing is a known problem with Gamescope version 3.16.3-1 where the –force-grab-cursor flag is broken. The best workaround is to downgrade Gamescope to version 3.16.2, which restores proper mouse grabbing behavior.

Answer 4 · 2025-04-16 20:08:48

This is a Wayland-related problem and affects multiple desktop environments including GNOME and KDE Plasma. Since Wayland handles input differently from Xorg, mouse grabbing can be tricky or broken depending on the compositor and the tools like Gamescope. It’s one of the things keeping many from fully switching to Wayland for gaming right now.