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I cannot figure out how to autostart a GUI application as the logged in user on the current Raspberry OS Full (Bookworm, 64-bit). I tried via systemd, but for some reason it fails, the error is as if the desktop environment is not fully initialized yet.

[Unit]
Description=My Autorun Service
After=graphical-session.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/pi/start_my_app.sh
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/
Restart=always
RestartSec=2s
User=pi

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

What are other possible way? Any better ways? Or is there anything wrong with my .service file?

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  • for some reason what reason, the error is what exactly? not your interpretation, what is the error? Commented Dec 17, 2023 at 3:00
  • Trying to start ANY program which interacts with users at boot is an exercise in futility (as any of the hundreds of similar questions indicate). Commented Dec 17, 2023 at 3:09
  • @Milliways: I am under impression that graphical-session.target should work, according to all descriptions, it's made just for this. And yet it doesn't work. Commented Dec 17, 2023 at 9:40
  • Unfortunately you are mistaken. Whatever is in the service won't start until the target is satisfied BUT root can't do any I/O to the user. This can only happen AFTER login. There are autostart tools to do this but Bookworm uses new tools. Commented Dec 17, 2023 at 10:13
  • 1
    Have a look here: raspberrypi.com/tutorials/… Scroll down to the first occurance of the word "wayfire" and start reading a paragraph before that, it should be very simple. If that works out, please consider leaving an answer of your own, most of the ones here are out-of-date. BTW, adding "User=pi" does not automatically mean the service is part of that user's login; for that you must invoke systemctl --user enable as user Pi. Commented Dec 17, 2023 at 15:10

1 Answer 1

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For Debian 12.4 Bookworm on RPi4 only the "Traditional" methods of this link How to Use Autostart for Desktop worked for me.

I created a .desktop file and it executed in both /etc/xdg/autostart, and alternately, a created /home/pi/.config/autostart/ directories.

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  • I did it as suggested in the comments - via .config/wayfire.ini, this also works as expected. Commented Dec 26, 2023 at 14:15

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