Preflight Checklist

• I have read the Contributing Guidelines for this project.
• I agree to follow the Code of Conduct that this project adheres to.
• I have searched the issue tracker for a feature request that matches the one I want to file, without success.

Problem Description

• modern Linux environments such as wayland and flatpak prevent applications from direct access to user input events (for security purposes)
• traditional approaches for implementing global keyboard shortcuts don't work here

Proposed Solution

• there's a new GlobalShortcuts portal API: https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/#gdbus-org.freedesktop.portal.GlobalShortcuts
• when an electron consumer calls globalShortcut functions ( https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/global-shortcut ) they should transparently attempt to interact with xdg-desktop-portal via DBus (when available)
• this way, app developers do not need to make any other changes to their code (besides updating the version of electron they use)

Alternatives Considered

• it might be worth making this a new JS API instead, but I predict that would lead to poor adoption and thus increased frustration for Linux users of electron-based apps
• other approaches include using root permissions to bypass the wayland / flatpak security model in order to maintain direct access to user input events, but this seems a lot less safe than the proposed solution

Additional Information

These Linux desktop environments have already implemented the GlobalShortcuts portal:

• Hyprland: https://github.com/hyprwm/xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland/blob/2bdadd2d37f42b516587c64c963ea638c6df8355/hyprland.portal#L3
• KDE: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/xdg-desktop-portal-kde/-/blob/faf620bae9a6601e5380de96ceebce63bc7a062d/data/kde.portal#L3

These are tracking issues/discussions for other desktop environments:

• COSMIC: feature request: GlobalShortcuts portal pop-os/xdg-desktop-portal-cosmic#4
• GNOME: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/xdg-desktop-portal-gnome/-/issues/47
• wlroots (for sway/river and others): Global shortcut portal support emersion/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr#240