/Solaar

Linux device manager for Logitech devices

Primary LanguagePythonGNU General Public License v2.0GPL-2.0

title layout
Solaar
default

Solaar is a Linux manager for many Logitech keyboards, mice, and trackpads that connect wirelessly to a USB Unifying, Lightspeed, or Nano receiver, connect directly via a USB cable, or connect via Bluetooth. Solaar does not work with peripherals from other companies.

Solaar can be used as a GUI application or via its command-line interface. Both interfaces are able to list the connected devices and show information about each device, often including battery status. Solaar is able to pair and unpair devices with receivers as supported by the device and receiver. Solaar can also control some changeable features of devices, such as smooth scrolling or function key behavior. For more information on how to use Solaar see the usage page, and for more information on its capabilities see the capabilities page.

Solaar's GUI normally uses an icon in the system tray and starts with its main window visible. The GUI can be started in several ways

  • --window=show (the default) starts with its main window visible,
  • --window=hide starts with its main window hidden,
  • --window=only do not use the system tray, and start with main window visible.

For more information on Solaar's command-line interface use the help option, as in solaar --help.

Solaar does not process normal input from devices. It is thus unable to fix problems that arise from incorrect handling of mouse movements or keycodes by Linux drivers or other software.

Solaar has progressed past version 1.0. Problems with earlier versions should not be reported as bugs. Instead, upgrade to a recent version or manually install the current version from GitHub. Some capabilities of Solaar have been developed by observing the behavior of Logitech receivers and devices and generalizing from these observations. If your Logitech receiver or device behaves strangely this may be caused by an incorrect behavior generalization. Please report such experiences by creating an issue in the Solaar repository.

Supported Devices

Solaar will detect all devices paired with your Unifying, Lightspeed, or Nano receiver, and at the very least display some basic information about them. Solaar will detect some Logitech devices that connect via a USB cable or Bluetooth.

Solaar can pair and unpair a Logitech device showing the Unifying logo (Solaar's version of the logo) with any Unifying receiver and can pair and unpair Lightspeed devices with Lightspeed receivers for the same model. Solaar can pair some Logitech devices with Logitech Nano receivers but not all Logitech devices can be paired with Nano receivers. Logitech devices without a Unifying logo generally cannot be paired with Unifying receivers.

Solaar does not handle connecting or disconnecting via Bluetooth, which is done using the usual Bluetooth mechanisms.

For a partial list of supported devices and their features, see the devices page.

Prebuilt packages

Prebuilt packages are available for some Linux distros.

Solaar has progressed beyond version 1.0 but some distros or repositories provide version 0.9.2, which is very old. Installing the current version will provide significant improvements. If a recent version of Solaar is not available from the standard repositories for your distribution you can try one of these packages.

Solaar uses a standard system tray implementation; solaar-gnome3 is no longer required for gnome or unity integration.

Manual installation

See the installation page for the step-by-step procedure for manual installation.

Known Issues

  • The icon in the system tray can show up as 'black on black' in dark distributions. This is due to problems in many system tray implementations. Changing to a different theme may help.

  • Sometimes the system tray icon does not show up. The cause of this is unknown. Either wait a while and try again or try with the --window=hide option.

  • If some icons appear broken in the application, make sure you've properly configured the Gtk theme and icon theme in your control panel.

  • Running the command-line application while the GUI application is also running may occasionally cause either of them to become confused about the state of the devices.

License

This software is distributed under the terms of the GNU Public License, v2.

Thanks

This project began as a third-hand clone of Noah K. Tilton's logitech-solar-k750 project on GitHub (no longer available). It was developed further thanks to the diggings in Logitech's HID++ protocol done by many other people:

Also, thanks to Douglas Wagner, Julien Gascard, and Peter Wu for helping with application testing and supporting new devices.