#+TITLE: Wacom With Arch
#+DATE: <2025-08-08 Fri>
#+OPTIONS: toc:nil num:nil 
#+FILETAGS: :insights:
#+COMMENTS: t
#+SLUG: wacom-with-arch

* Setting up Wacom Tablet in Arch Hyprland

I purchased a  [[https://www.wacom.com/en-gb/products/one-by-wacom][One by Wacom]] tablet almost 2 years ago now and it works flawlessly in both Windows and MacOS and even in most Linux distros with some configuration.

However with Arch and Hyprland, there were some issues related to the ~xserver~ it was running on. The X input driver module (e.g. xf86-input-wacom) is linked into the X server which in turn is in charge of rendering and generic input events. Hyprland on the other hand uses the Wayland display server protocol (replacement for the X protocol) hence why there is difficulty in input mapping.

I came across this issue as I was able to get the tablet to work across multiple monitors (mapping to a single one) through the ~xsetwacom~ function - which, at the time I was using Ubuntu. But with Hyprland there needs to be some manual intervention. I came across this [[https://thomaspurnell.com/003_wacom_graphics_hyprland/wacom_hyprland.html][post]] which explains nicely how to map the tablet to a single monitor. I took this approach with a slight configuration; in my ~hyprland.conf~ file, I simply added the following line:

#+BEGIN_SRC
  exec-once = hyprctl keyword "device[wacom-one-by-wacom-m-pen]:output" "DP-1"
#+END_SRC

which mapped the device to the primary monitor DP-1.
