CONSOLATION(8)

✨ NAME ✨

consolation — bestie, it's copy-paste for the Linux console 💖

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

consolation [libinput options]

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👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

Okay so real talk: Consolation is a daemon that brings copy-paste and scrolling support to the Linux console. Yes, the actual console. The one with no mouse. Iconic behavior, honestly. 🫶

It rides on the libinput library and supports all the pointer devices and settings that library hands out. It's giving "I contain multitudes."

Similar software out there include gpm and jamd — so if you've met those, you know the vibe. 🌸

🖱️ Operations, aka what your mouse buttons actually do

• left button — start selection
• middle button — paste selection
• right button — set end of selection
• wheel — scroll
• double left click — select word (peep --word-chars for the definition of a word, iykyk)
• triple left click — select line

You can redefine button actions with the --map 'button=action' option. Action names are 'select', 'paste', 'endselect'. Button names are 'BTN_LEFT', 'BTN_MIDDLE', 'BTN_RIGHT'. Other evdev button names are supported too, no cap. 💅

By default, if the terminal requests mouse report, mouse actions get reported to the terminal instead of being performed. So the terminal gets the tea first. 😭

It supports all the standard libinput options. All of them. Periodt.

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

Device discovery era

• --udev <seat> — use udev device discovery (this is the default). Specifying a seat ID is optional.
• --device /path/to/device — open the given device(s) only.
• --apply-to="pattern" — configuration options are only applied where the device name matches the pattern.
• --disable-sendevents="pattern" — sets the send-events option to disabled for the devices matching patterns.

✨ Features ✨ (the glow-up section)

• --enable-tap, --disable-tap — enable/disable tapping.
• --enable-drag, --disable-drag — enable/disable tap-n-drag.
• --enable-drag-lock, --disable-drag-lock — enable/disable tapping drag lock.
• --enable-natural-scrolling, --disable-natural-scrolling — enable/disable natural scrolling.
• --enable-left-handed, --disable-left-handed — enable/disable left-handed button configuration.
• --enable-middlebutton, --disable-middlebutton — enable/disable middle button emulation.
• --enable-dwt, --disable-dwt — enable/disable disable-while-typing.
• --enable-dwtp, --disable-dwtp — enable/disable disable-while-trackpointing.
• --enable-scroll-button-lock, --disable-scroll-button-lock — enable/disable the scroll button lock.
• --set-click-method=[none|clickfinger|buttonareas] — set the desired click method.
• --set-scroll-method=[none|twofinger|edge|button] — set the desired scroll method.
• --set-scroll-button=BTN_MIDDLE — set the button to the given button code.
• --set-speed=<value> — set pointer acceleration speed. Allowed range is [-1, 1].
• --set-tap-map=[lrm|lmr] — set button mapping for tapping.
• --set-rotation-angle=<degrees> — set the rotation angle in degrees (0 to 360).
• --set-profile=[adaptive|flat|custom] — set pointer acceleration profile.
  • If profile is custom, then these three come out to play:
    • --set-custom-points=0.0;1.0 — set the n points defining a custom acceleration function.
    • --set-custom-step=1.0 — sets the distance along the x-axis between each point, starting from 0.
    • --set-custom-type=[fallback|motion|scroll] — set the type of the custom acceleration function.

These options apply to all applicable devices — and if a feature is not explicitly specified, it's left at each device's default. No forcing, no drama. 🧚

🌈 Other options

• --word-chars=<string> — list of characters that make up words. Ranges (a-z, A-Z, 0-9 etc.) are allowed. Slay.
• --grab — exclusively grab all opened devices.
• --map button=action — set button to action.
• --no-daemon — do not detach and run in the background.
• --disable-mouse-reporting — disable mouse reporting.
• --verbose — print debugging output.
• --version — print version information.
• --help — print this help.

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📜 LICENSE 📜

Copyright © 2016 Bill Allombert 💜

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

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🔗 HOMEPAGE 🔗

https://salsa.debian.org/consolation-team/consolation/

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🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> — absolute legend, fr fr. 🌟

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• gpm(8)

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And that's the whole page, bestie! This one shipped from Debian with a date stamp of January 2026, and CONSOLATION(8) means it lives over in the System Administration Utilities corner of the manual. Go forth and paste. 💅✨🎀