XGPS(1)

💖 XGPS 💖 — like, the X client for gpsd, bestie

okay so real quick, this is a page from the GPSD Documentation set, and it's for the tool called xgps. It's giving "small but mighty" ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

xgps — an X client for gpsd. yes that's the whole vibe. a GUI bestie for your GPS daemon. 🛰️

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

xgps [OPTIONS] [service[:port[:device]]]

xgps -h

xgps -V

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so xgps is a simple sample client for gpsd with an X interface. it's literally the demo bestie. 💅 It displays current GNSS position/time/velocity information and — for GNSS receivers that support the feature — the locations of accessible satellites. no cap.

In the sky view, satellites are color-coded to indicate quality of signal, and you should consult the data display to the left for exact figures in dB. 📊 here's the icon lore, memorize it:

• 💎 Diamond-shaped icons indicate GLONASS satellites
• ⬜ squares are used for SBAS (e.g. WAAS, EGNOS)
• ⭕ circles indicate GPS
• 🔻⬆️➡️⬅️ down-, up-, right-, and left-pointing triangles, respectively, indicate Galileo, BeiDou, QZSS, and other systems' satellites (e.g. IMES, IRNSS, as well as unknown systems)

Filled icons were used in the current fix, outline icons were not. and hovering over a symbol with the mouse pointer will temporarily display a small popup window with the satellite details from the Satellite List pane. it's giving tooltip slay. 🫶

xgps will run fine as a normal user, and fine as root. but running xgps under sudo will cause some loss of functionality. 😭 noted.

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -?, -h, --help — Causes the client to emit a summary of its options and then exit. the classic "what does anything do" button.
• -device DEVICE — The device on the host to connect to. The default is empty (any).
• -D LVL, --debug LVL — Sets the debug level, it is primarily for use by GPSD developers. It enables various progress messages to standard error. devs only, iykyk.
• --host HOST — The host (server) to connect to. The default is localhost.
• -l FMT, --llfmt FMT — Set the format of latitude and longitude reports. The value 'd' produces decimal degrees and is the default. The value 'm' produces degrees and decimal minutes. The value 's' produces degrees, minutes, and decimal seconds.
• -p PORT, --port PORT — The port to connect to. The default is 2947.
• -r DEG, --rotate DEG — Accepts an argument in degrees to rotate the skyview counterclockwise. spin it bestie. 🌪️
• -c FORMAT, --const FORMAT — Display format of constellation. Can display abbreviated, full name, or full name & flag where possible.

NOTE: flags require a UTF-8 font with emoji flags 🏳️ — yes fr fr, font matters here.

• -V, --version — This option causes each client to dump the package version and exit.

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🦋 ARGUMENTS 🦋

By default, clients collect data from the local gpsd daemon running on localhost, using the default GPSD port 2947. The optional argument to any client may override this behavior:

[server[:port[:device]]]

For further explanation and examples, see the ARGUMENTS section in the gps(1) man page. go read it, it's iconic. 📖

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

The XGPSOPTS> environment variable may be set to pass commonly used command line options to xgps. This is often used to set the -u option for locale-specific units. XGPSOPTS is processed before the CLI options. (so it gets first dibs 💅)

xgps also looks at other envitonment variables to figure out the units for display — imperial, nautical, or metric. Here are the variables and values checked:

GPSD_UNITS one of:
          i          = miles/feet
          imperial   = miles/feet
          n          = knots/feet
          nautical   = knots/feet
          m          = km/meters
          metric     = km/meters
LC_MEASUREMENT
          en_US      = miles/feet
          C          = miles/feet
          POSIX      = miles/feet
          [other]    = km/meters
LANG
          en_US      = miles/feet
          C          = miles/feet
          POSIX      = miles/feet
          [other]    = km/meters

The -u or --units option overrides these preferences. 👑

The -u option can be used to set the system units for display; follow the keyword with 'i' for 'imperial' for American units (International Feet in altitude and error estimates, miles per hour in speeds), 'n' for 'nautical' (feet in altitude and error estimates, knots in speed) or 'm' for 'metric' (meters in altitude and error estimates, kilometers per hour in speed).

Note: The USA Survey Foot is not supported. don't even try it bestie. 🙈

The environment variable GPSD_UNITS is checked if no unit system is specified on the command line or in XPGSOPTS it may be set to 'i'. 'imperial', 'm', 'metric', or 'n', 'nautical'.

LC_MEASUREMENT and then LANG are checked if no unit system has been specified on the command line, in XPGSOPTS or in GPSD_UNITS. If the value is 'C', 'POSIX', or begins with 'en_US', the unit system is set to imperial. The default if no system has been selected defaults to metric. 🧚

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💜 MENU OPTIONS 💜

• File > Connect — Try to open a new server connection, defaulting to the previous server.
• File > Disconnect — Use the 'disconnect' feature to sever the current server connection without exiting the software. bye but not bye. ✌️
• File > Devices — This allows you to change which device XGPS reports data from, defaulting to all devices.
• File > Quit — Quit xgps. it's over. 🫡
• View — Toggle the visibility of panels in the display; the panels are (from top to bottom) a satellite sky view, and data from Global Positioning Satellites, the (nautical) Automatic Identification System, attitude sensor, Inertal Mesaurement Units, noise statistics, and Real-Time Kinematic positioning. Xgps shows the satellite Skyview and GPS panels by default, the AIS panel hides until selected, and the attitude, IMU, noise, and RTK panels don't automatically reveal themselves until appropriate data is received. shy panels fr. 🙈
• Units > Imperial, Metric, Nautical — Select the unit set used for speed and altitude. This setting defaults to metric unless xgps detects an American, "C", or "POSIX" setting for either the LANG or LC_MEASUREMENT environment variables (see above).
• Units > DD.dd, DD MM.mm, DD MM SS.ss — Set the angle format in degrees, degrees-minutes, or degrees-minutes seconds. The last unit is a floating point number and previous integers.
• Units > 30, 45, Off — Change the satellite scatter graphs banding defaults to 30 degrees.
• Units > Mag North Up, Track Up, True North Up — Change the orientation in the satellite scatter graph to your liking, defaulting to true north. 🧭
• Help > About — Show information about xgps.

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🍓 RETURN VALUES 🍓

• 0 — on success. slay. ✨
• 1 — on failure. 💀

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

gpsd(8), gps(1), xgpsspeed(1)

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🎀 RESOURCES 🎀

Project web site: https://gpsd.io/

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💅 COPYING 💅

This file is Copyright by the GPSD project

SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-clause

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🌟 AUTHORS 🌟

• Remco Treffcorn
• Derrick Brashear
• Russ Nelson
• Eric S. Raymond

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and that's the whole page bestie 🫶 this doc came from GPSD, Version 3.27.5, dated 2025-11-04 — go forth and slay your skyview 👑💖