libwacom-show-stylus(1)

✨ libwacom-show-stylus — bestie's guide to peeking at your stylus 💅

okay so this is libwacom-show-stylus, and she lives in the General Commands Manual section of your friendly neighbourhood man pages. she's a lil utility, one job only: show you the tool id and the serial number of a stylus. that's it. that's the whole gig. and honestly? iconic for it. 🎀

🌸 NAME 🌸

libwacom-show-stylus — a utility to show the tool id and serial number of a stylus ✨

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

libwacom-show-stylus [path]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so libwacom-show-stylus is an interactive debug utility — key word interactive, she's a yapper, she wants to talk to you live — and what she does is show the tool id and the serial number of a pen that's currently in proximity. like, the pen has to be right there, hovering or touching, being perceived. no pen nearby = nothing to show. she's not psychic bestie, she's a debug tool 🫶

heads up fr fr: this tool needs read access to the /dev/input/event* device node. typically that means you should run it as root. no cap, permissions are the whole plot here. 👑

now for the argument situation:

• if you don't pass a path, she goes looking for the first available tablet device and just uses that one. lowkey helpful, she'll pick for you.
• if you do pass a path, it must be an evdev device node — like, for example, /dev/input/event0. that exact flavour of path. don't come at her with anything else 💀

and that's the whole page, bestie. short, sweet, does exactly one thing and does it well — main character energy only 🌈

libwacom-show-stylus(1) 💜 straight out of the General Commands Manual, same name up top and same name at the bottom, no version, no date, just vibes and a tool id. periodt. ✨🎀🦋💅