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libwacom is a C library to provide information about tablet devices that is not available through the kernel. It is currently used by GNOME's mutter, the GNOME Control Center Wacom tablet applet, libinput, and others.

Note that libwacom itself does not control the behavior of the device, it merely provides information about this device (usually based on a vendor and product ID lookup).

Purpose

libwacom supplies metadata about tablet devices that is not available from the device itself. This includes information about which styli are supported, whether the tablet can be rotated, whether it's integrated into a screen, etc. This information can then be used to control the tablet itself.

For example the Wacom tablet configuration in GNOME uses the information exported by libwacom to

• map the tablet to a screen if whether the tablet is built-in (Cintiq or tablet PC)
• allow the tablet to change to left-handed if it is reversible
• have a per-stylus configuration on all supported styli

libinput uses libwacom to

• know when to rotate the tablet for left-handed users
• know which touch devices are on the same physical device as the pen device

Maintainer

Peter Hutterer is the current libwacom maintainer.

Please do not send email regarding bugs or feature requests to the maintainer. Use the issue tracker instead.