PipeWire is a server for handling audio, video streams, and hardware on Linux.

It was based on ideas from several existing projects, including one called PulseVideo by William Manley.

[8][9][10][11] According to Red Hat's Christian Schaller, it drew many of its ideas from an early PulseVideo prototype by Manley and builds upon some of the code that was merged into GStreamer due to that effort.

Taymans wanted to support both consumer and professional audio use cases, and consulted Paul Davis (Jack developer) and Robin Gareus (Ardour developer) for advice on implementation for professional audio.

[18] In 2023, it was adopted as the default audio server for the GNOME desktop environment in Debian 12 Bookworm.