Tablet Mode virtual switch

This project provides a daemon that acts as a Tablet Mode virtual switch that toggles on HID device connect and disconnect.

I made it since I was using ydotool which provides a virtual pointer device preventing GNOME to toggle tablet mode on my Microsoft Surface Pro (2017) aka 5th gen where the device reports itself as a Laptop and the Tablet Mode switch is present in the Microsoft Surface Type Cover.

GNOME toggles tablet mode when there are no pointers but ydotool provides one.

How it works

This daemon provides a virtual HID device which has a Tablet Mode switch. This switch is toggled to true when a HID device included in the internal list is disconnected and to false when it is connected.

How to Install

Clone this repo and run:

make
sudo make install

Enabling the service

There is a ready to go systemd service unit you just have to enable and start it as follows:

sudo systemctl enable tablet-mode-vswitch.service
sudo systemctl start tablet-mode-vswitch.service

If you want to check daemon logs just use journalctl:

sudo journalctl -u tablet-mode-vswitch

To DO list

Detect whether the HID devices in the list are present or not when the daemon starts and set the virtual Tablet Mode switch accordingly. Currently starts as false.

License

This project is licensed under GPL3 or later license which you can find in the LICENSE file.