pw-reserve(1) General Commands Manual pw-reserve(1)

# [NAME](#NAME)

pw-reserve - The PipeWire device reservation utility

# [SYNOPSIS](#SYNOPSIS)

**pw-reserve** \[*options*]

# [DESCRIPTION](#DESCRIPTION)

Reserves a device using the DBus org.freedesktop.ReserveDevice1 device reservation scheme \[1], waiting until terminated by SIGINT or another signal.

It can also request other applications to release a device. This can be used to make audio servers such as PipeWire, Pulseaudio, JACK, or other applications that respect the device reservation protocol, to ignore a device, or to release a sound device they are already using so that it can be used by other applications.

# [OPTIONS](#OPTIONS)

**-r | --release**

Request any client currently holding the device to release it, and try to reserve it after that. If this option is not given and the device is already in use, **pw-reserve** will exit with error status.

**-n NAME | --name=NAME**

Name of the device to reserve. By convention, this is

•

Audio*N*: for ALSA card number *N*

**pw-reserve** can reserve any device name, however PipeWire does not currently support other values than listed above.

**-a NAME | --appname=NAME**

Application name to use when reserving the device.

**-p PRIO | --priority=PRIO**

Priority to use when reserving the device.

**-m | --monitor**

Monitor reservations of a given device, instead of reserving it.

**-h | --help**

Show help.

**--version**

Show version information.

# [EXIT STATUS](#EXIT_STATUS)

If the device reservation succeeds, **pw-reserve** does not exit until terminated with a signal. It exits with status 0 if terminated by SIGINT or SIGTERM in this case.

Otherwise, it exits with nonzero exit status.

# [EXAMPLES](#EXAMPLES)

**pw-reserve** -n Audio0

Reserve ALSA card 0, and exit with error if it is already reserved.

**pw-reserve** -n Audio0 -r

Reserve ALSA card 0, requesting any applications that have reserved the device to release it for us.

# [AUTHORS](#AUTHORS)

The PipeWire Developers <https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/issues>; PipeWire is available from <https://pipewire.org>

# [SEE ALSO](#SEE_ALSO)

\[1] https://git.0pointer.net/reserve.git/tree/reserve.txt - A simple device reservation scheme with DBus

1.6.11 PipeWire

---

Document: pw-reserve(1) from pipewire 1.6.11-r2 (Chainguard OS)
Source: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire