Omarchy lock screen will not unlock

Two very different faults produce the same complaint. Either the lock screen shows a password box and rejects a password you know is right, or there is no box at all and the desktop stays behind a blank or grey screen. Fix them differently.

The fix

Start by working out which one you have. If you can see the Omarchy password field and it answers with Authentication failed (1), go to step 1. If there is no field, no cursor, and nothing reacts, go to step 3.

1. Wait out the lockout, or reset it. Omarchy configures PAM with deny=10 unlock_time=120. After ten failures the correct password is refused for two minutes. Stop typing, wait, then try once more.

2. Clear the counter from a TTY. If waiting does not help, press Ctrl + Alt + F2, log in, and run:

faillock --user $USER          # shows the recorded failures
sudo faillock --user $USER --reset

Then Ctrl + Alt + F1 back to the session and unlock. On 3.x and 4.0.0 the same thing is wrapped as omarchy-sudo-reset, which runs su -c "faillock --reset --user $USER" and needs the root password. That wrapper was removed in 4.0.1, so from there on use faillock directly. This is also what the manual’s troubleshooting chapter recommends.

3. Restart the shell instead of rebooting (4.x only). When the Quickshell process that holds the lock dies, Hyprland keeps the session locked with no client left to type into. Get a TTY with Ctrl + Alt + F2, or SSH in from another machine, then:

omarchy-restart-shell

It kills the old instance, relaunches the shell through Hyprland, asks for the session lock again, and keeps checking lock status until it reports secure. Go back to the session and authenticate normally. This path landed in PR #6630 and shipped in 4.0.0. Older builds of omarchy-restart-shell bailed out whenever the session was locked, so a dead lock client meant a reboot.

4. Repair the lock PAM file. If the lock never appears at all, and omarchy-shell lock lock answers missing-pam, the file /etc/pam.d/omarchy-lock-password is missing. Recreate it:

sudo omarchy-apply-lock

The same command rewrites /etc/pam.d/omarchy-lock-fingerprint when you have prints enrolled, and removes it when you do not.

5. On 3.x, check the hyprlock PAM file. Omarchy 3.x locks with hyprlock, which needs /etc/pam.d/hyprlock. Users in issue #2094 reported unlock failing outright when it was absent, and restored it by writing a stack that includes system-local-login. On 4.x this file is irrelevant, since the Quickshell lock uses its own two stacks.

Verify it worked

Ask the lock service directly rather than guessing:

omarchy-shell lock status     # JSON with locked, secure, requested, lastEvent
omarchy debug idle            # idle, screensaver and lock diagnostics in one dump
faillock --user $USER         # should print no failure records
journalctl -t omarchy-shell -n 100

The shell log lines look like omarchy lock <timestamp> secure=true. A healthy cycle logs lock-requested, then secure=true, then unlocked. Lines such as lock-denied: missing-pam or lock-stranded: recovering point straight at steps 4 and 3. Then test deliberately: run omarchy system lock from a terminal and unlock it once while you are sitting there.

Why it happens

The rejected password is almost always pam_faillock, not a wrong password. The counter is shared: a mistyped sudo password in a terminal, or a script with a broken sudoers rule, counts toward the same lockout the lock screen enforces. In issue #1571 one reporter traced a constant lockout to a Waybar script calling sudo wg show. A common accidental trigger is waking the machine by mashing Enter, which submits empty passwords. That is the repro apfernandes posted on the same issue.

The missing password box is a different failure. Wayland’s ext-session-lock deliberately keeps the session locked if the lock client dies, so the compositor shows its failsafe and nothing accepts input. In 4.x that client is the single Quickshell process. Reported ways to kill it: the lock’s own DPMS blank causing a monitor to drop its DRM connector, which akashgagda demonstrated with an A/B test in issue #6628, and writing to any file under ~/.config/omarchy/plugins/ while locked, which used to tear down and recreate the lock service (issue #9441). PR #9485 made keepLoaded services survive a plugin hot reload and shipped in 4.0.3, so keep plugins out of the picture on 4.0.0 through 4.0.2.

4.0.3 also carried two changes to lock authentication. PR #10225 pinned the privileged lock helper’s PATH and calls /usr/bin/fprintd-list by absolute path, and PR #9618 restricted third-party plugins from reaching the shell’s authentication services, with the lock plugin now declaring an authentication capability in its manifest. If a custom plugin of yours reached into the lock or polkit services, it stopped working at 4.0.3 by design.

If that did not work

Check the keyboard first. Locking runs hyprctl switchxkblayout all 0, which forces the first configured layout, so a second layout or a remapped Caps Lock can silently change what you type. See layouts and locale.

Fingerprint unlock has its own open bug. If the machine suspends while a verify is in flight, fprintd comes back busy, PAM answers Authentication service cannot retrieve authentication info, and the shell retries every 250ms for the rest of the lock (issues #7176 and #11412, still open on 4.0.4). Type the password instead, or run omarchy-remove-security-fingerprint if you want the retry loop gone.

Two more open items worth knowing. Issue #10459 reports the opposite risk: a lock lost on output re-add is treated as a successful unlock and the desktop is exposed without a password. Issue #6223 covers machines that hard reset at DPMS off after lock, which is a kernel and GPU problem rather than a lock problem. Both were open when this page was checked against 4.0.4.

If you cannot reach a TTY at all, see stuck at TTY or cannot switch TTY.

Related

• Black screen after login
• Quickshell crashes or bar missing
• Login loop or password not accepted in SDDM
• Suspend will not resume
• Fingerprint enrollment fails
• Hardware notes on suspend and sleep