Weylus — Use Your Tablet as a Drawing Input Device

Introduction

Weylus lets you use a tablet or smartphone as a graphic tablet, touchscreen, or keyboard for your computer. It runs as a lightweight server on your desktop and serves a web interface your tablet connects to via the browser — no app install required on the client side.

What Weylus Does

• Turns any touchscreen device into a pressure-sensitive drawing tablet for your PC
• Mirrors a selected window or full screen to the tablet's browser
• Supports stylus pressure and tilt on compatible devices (iPad, Surface, etc.)
• Works cross-platform: Linux, macOS, and Windows as host; any modern browser as client
• Provides hardware-accelerated video encoding for low-latency screen mirroring

Architecture Overview

Weylus is written in Rust and runs a small HTTP/WebSocket server on the host machine. The tablet connects via a standard web browser, receiving a live video stream of the host's screen encoded with FFmpeg (using VA-API or NVENC when available). Touch and stylus events are captured via JavaScript Pointer Events and sent back over WebSocket, then injected into the host's input system via uinput (Linux), the Accessibility API (macOS), or the Windows input APIs.

Self-Hosting & Configuration

• Download a prebuilt binary from the GitHub releases page for Linux, macOS, or Windows
• On Linux, ensure the user has access to /dev/uinput for input injection
• Configure the listening address and port via command-line flags (default 0.0.0.0:1701)
• Optionally restrict access with a password or bind to localhost and use SSH tunneling
• Hardware-accelerated encoding is auto-detected; override with --try-vaapi or --try-nvenc flags

Key Features

• Zero install on the client side — uses only the tablet's web browser
• Pressure sensitivity support through the Pointer Events API
• Low-latency screen mirroring with hardware-accelerated video encoding
• Multi-touch gesture support for scrolling, zooming, and panning
• Lightweight single binary with no runtime dependencies beyond system libraries

Comparison with Similar Tools

• VirtualTablet — requires a dedicated Android/iOS app; Weylus uses any browser
• Splashtop Wired XDisplay — commercial, wired-only; Weylus is free and wireless
• spacedesk — focuses on extending displays; Weylus focuses on input with pressure sensitivity
• Barrier/Synergy — shares keyboard and mouse across computers but lacks drawing tablet input
• KDE Connect — offers touchpad mode but no pressure-sensitive stylus or screen mirror

FAQ

Q: Does Weylus work with drawing apps like Krita or GIMP? A: Yes. On the host machine, Weylus appears as a standard input device, so any application that accepts tablet input will work.

Q: Do I need to install an app on my tablet? A: No. You only need a modern web browser on the tablet.

Q: What about latency? A: With hardware-accelerated encoding, latency is typically under 30ms on a local network.

Q: Is it secure for use on shared networks? A: You can set a password or bind to localhost and tunnel via SSH. Avoid running it on untrusted networks without protection.

Sources

• https://github.com/H-M-H/Weylus
• https://github.com/H-M-H/Weylus#readme