pw-pulse modifies the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable so that applications will load PipeWire's reimplementation of the PulseAudio client libraries instead of PulseAudio's own libraries. This results in PulseAudio clients being redirected to PipeWire.

If PipeWire's reimplementation of the PulseAudio client libraries has been installed as a system-wide replacement for PulseAudio's own libraries, then the whole system already behaves in that way, in which case pw-pulse has no practical effect.