spa-inspect

Inspect PipeWire SPA plugin details

TLDR

Display information about a SPA plugin

$ spa-inspect [path/to/plugin.so]

Inspect a Bluetooth codec plugin

$ spa-inspect /usr/lib64/spa-0.2/bluez5/libspa-codec-bluez5-sbc.so

Inspect an audio convert plugin

$ spa-inspect /usr/lib64/spa-0.2/audioconvert/libspa-audioconvert.so

spa-inspect displays information about SPA (Simple Plugin API) plugins used by PipeWire. It lists the factories contained within a plugin and attempts to instantiate them, showing available interfaces and capabilities.SPA plugins are the low-level building blocks of PipeWire, handling audio/video processing, device access, and format conversion. This tool helps developers and administrators understand what functionality each plugin provides.

PARAMETERS

FILE

Path to a SPA plugin shared object file (.so)

INSTALL

sudo apt install pipewire-bin

sudo apk add pipewire-spa-tools

sudo zypper install pipewire-spa-tools

CAVEATS

Plugin paths vary by distribution and architecture (lib vs lib64). Some plugins may fail to instantiate without proper hardware or dependencies. Primarily useful for debugging and development purposes.

HISTORY

spa-inspect is part of PipeWire, developed by Wim Taymans at Red Hat. PipeWire was created starting around 2017 as a unified multimedia framework for Linux, combining the capabilities of PulseAudio and JACK. The SPA layer provides the plugin architecture that makes PipeWire modular and extensible.