Mailspring on Wayland (Hyprland) does not show main window; repeated mailsync.bin SIGSEGV during sync (AUR, Flatpak, /opt installs)

Bug Reports
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1

If you need further info, please let me know and I can provide more, I’ve tried multiple install methods and email accounts.

Description

On a Wayland session using Hyprland, Mailspring launches but does not open the main window. A dock/taskbar icon appears and responds to right-click, but the UI never becomes visible. When launched, logs repeatedly show:
ERROR: … wayland_wp_image_description.cc:219 Incomplete image description info from compositor.
Background sync process mailsync.bin repeatedly crashes with SIGSEGV (core dumps present), including on the AUR install path /usr/lib/mailspring/app.asar.unpacked/mailsync.bin.
Forcing X11 with --ozone-platform=x11 starts without the Wayland image-description error spam, but does not resolve the overall issue (and is not desired as the primary mode on a Wayland desktop).

To Reproduce

  1. Boot into a Wayland session with Hyprland.

  2. Launch Mailspring from a terminal with: mailspring --password-store="gnome-libsecret"

  3. The process prints “Running database migrations” and “App load time …”
    A dock/taskbar icon appears (responds to right-click). The main application window never appears.

  4. Error message in terminal shows:

    Running database migrations
App load time: 138ms

{“error”:null}
[33351:0122/081517.947083:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/host/wayland_wp_image_description.cc:219] Incomplete image description info from compositor.
Manual update check (updates.getmailspring.com/check/linux/x64/1.17.1-dd5b3e56/anonymous/stable) returned 204
(node:33351) [DEP0180] DeprecationWarning: fs.Stats constructor is deprecated.
…
(repeated wayland_wp_image_description.cc:219 messages)

Expected Behavior

Application launches and is able to be interacted with.

Setup

OS / distro: Linux - CachyOS (Arch-based)
Session type: Wayland
XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland
WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-1
XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=Hyprland
Compositor: Hyprland 0.53.1
Hyprlang: built against 0.6.7, system has 0.6.8
GPU: AMD Radeon 780M (amdgpu)
Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
OpenGL/Mesa: Mesa 25.3.3-arch1.6 (from glxinfo -B)
Kernel: 6.18.6-1-cachyos-bore (from glxinfo -B)
Mailspring versions tested: 1.17.1-dd5b3e56 (and 1.17.0-5e478521)

Install methods: AUR / system install path: /usr/lib/mailspring/...Flatpak install path: /app/share/mailspring/...

A separate /opt/mailspring/... install was also present earlier in testing

(The crash signatures are consistent: mailsync.bin SIGSEGV during sync.)

Additional Context

I’ve got some core dumps from my attempts to troubleshoot.

Thu 2026-01-22 07:29:10 CET 7810 1000 1000 SIGSEGV present /opt/mailspring/resources/app.asar.unpacked/mailsync.bin 979.3K
Thu 2026-01-22 07:29:37 CET 8066 1000 1000 SIGSEGV present /opt/mailspring/resources/app.asar.unpacked/mailsync.bin 977.1K
Thu 2026-01-22 07:30:04 CET 8303 1000 1000 SIGSEGV present /opt/mailspring/resources/app.asar.unpacked/mailsync.bin 978.2K
Thu 2026-01-22 07:36:03 CET 8991 1000 1000 SIGTRAP truncated /opt/mailspring/mailspring 11.1M
Thu 2026-01-22 07:44:26 CET 12365 1000 1000 SIGTRAP truncated /opt/mailspring/mailspring 2.7M
Thu 2026-01-22 07:46:14 CET 15491 1000 1000 SIGSEGV present /opt/mailspring/resources/app.asar.unpacked/mailsync.bin 7.5M
Thu 2026-01-22 07:58:27 CET 16213 1000 1000 SIGTRAP truncated /opt/mailspring/mailspring 11.1M
Thu 2026-01-22 08:09:40 CET 23492 1000 1000 SIGSEGV present /app/share/mailspring/resources/app.asar.unpacked/mailsync.bin 17.1M
Thu 2026-01-22 08:21:43 CET 34039 1000 1000 SIGSEGV present /usr/lib/mailspring/app.asar.unpacked/mailsync.bin 15.4M
Thu 2026-01-22 08:22:37 CET 34516 1000 1000 SIGSEGV present /usr/lib/mailspring/app.asar.unpacked/mailsync.bin 3.5M

2

Hit a very similar issue on CachyOS also (native install, not flatpak)

> mailspring Running database migrations App load time: 184ms Gtk-Message: 16:53:11.682: Failed to load module "appmenu-gtk-module" Error: Could not load libtidy. Tried: libtidy.so.5, libtidy.so.58, libtidy.so.5deb1, libtidy.so.60, libtidy.so.6, libtidy.so. Last error: libtidy.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Install libtidy on your system (e.g., 'apt install libtidy-dev' or 'dnf install libtidy-devel') {"error":null} [121371:0125/165312.144258:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/host/wayland_wp_color_manager.cc:273] Unable to set image transfer function. [121371:0125/165312.144268:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/host/wayland_wp_color_manager.cc:191] Failed to populate image description for color space {primaries:BT709, transfer:SRGB, matrix:RGB, range:FULL} [121371:0125/165312.144881:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/host/wayland_wp_color_manager.cc:273] Unable to set image transfer function. [121371:0125/165312.144888:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/host/wayland_wp_color_manager.cc:191] Failed to populate image description for color space {primaries:BT709, transfer:SRGB, matrix:RGB, range:FULL} Manual update check (updates.getmailspring.com/check/linux/x64/1.17.0-5e478521/anonymous/stable) returned 200 [121371:0125/165312.531398:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/host/wayland_wp_color_manager.cc:273] Unable to set image transfer function. [121371:0125/165312.531411:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/host/wayland_wp_color_manager.cc:191] Failed to populate image description for color space {primaries:BT709, transfer:SRGB, matrix:RGB, range:FULL} (node:121371) [DEP0180] DeprecationWarning: fs.Stats constructor is deprecated. (Use mailspring --trace-deprecation ... to show where the warning was created)

Was able to get it to launch by forcing x11, from the shortcut (/usr/share/applications/Mailspring.desktop):
Exec=/usr/bin/mailspring --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=x11 %U

3

I have to continue to run 1.16.0 because all the new updates will not launch mailspring on Zorin 18 using wayland also.

4

Hey folks - Mailspring 1.17.4 is now available and includes a Wayland window activation fix (#2599) that should address the invisible main window issue. The app now handles Wayland activation context gracefully, which we expect will resolve the problem on Hyprland and other Wayland compositors. Please update and let us know if this fixes the window visibility issue for you. Note that the SIGSEGV crashes in mailsync.bin are a separate issue from the window rendering – if those persist after updating, please open a new thread with logs.

5

Yes, works for me on Zorin OS