How fast is wayscriber's drawing performance?

Updated

wayscriber reports 8–9 ms p95/p99 input-to-commit latency at 120 FPS, with a default 120 FPS cap and vsync off. That is fast enough that ink appears to track your hand rather than lag behind it, which is the threshold that matters for live annotation during a presentation or call. The figures come from measurements on local hardware, and the site points to a performance section for details, so treat them as the project's own benchmark rather than an independent test.

What the numbers mean

Input-to-commit is the delay between your input (pen or pointer movement) and the frame being committed to the screen. Reporting it at p95/p99 means 95% and 99% of frames stayed within that 8–9 ms window — a tail-latency measure, not just an average. For annotation, tail latency is what you feel: occasional slow frames read as stutter even when the average looks fine.

At 120 FPS, one frame is about 8.3 ms. So 8–9 ms p95/p99 is roughly one frame of latency — about as tight as a 120 Hz pipeline allows.

Why it stays responsive

  • Native Rust binary. No Electron and no webview, so there is no browser engine between your input and the drawn output.
  • Vsync off by default. Frames are not held waiting for a display refresh, which removes a common source of added delay.
  • Configurable frame cap. The default cap is 120 FPS; 144/240+ is configurable if your display and hardware can sustain it.

What to check on your own machine

The published numbers are hardware-specific. To judge whether wayscriber is fast enough for your setup, verify:

  1. Your compositor is supported — Hyprland, Sway, River, Wayfire, Niri, COSMIC, and KDE Plasma are listed, with GNOME supported "with limits."
  2. Your display refresh rate and whether you raise the frame cap above 120.
  3. Whether the overlay keeps up during the tasks you actually do — freehand pen strokes, zoom, and multi-board switching.

If you present or annotate live and need ink that keeps pace with your hand, the reported latency and the native-binary design are the two signals to weigh. If you are on a compositor outside the supported list, or on GNOME, confirm behavior on your system before relying on it.