There’s no good standalone controller-driven on-screen keyboard on Linux. Steam’s keyboard requires Steam running. Other virtual keyboards (Onboard, Florence) need a mouse pointer or are dead projects. I wanted something that takes D-pad and stick input directly, like a console, but can be launched independently of specific games or platforms.
So I built one written in Go with SDL2 originally, but I have a vastly updated SDL3/Wayland branch that’s WIP and ready for testing. It works as a daemon with a configurable controller combo to toggle show/hide.
The SDL3/Wayland branch adds layer-shell support, fullscreen-aware positioning, and a lot of improvements over the v1.1 release. Getting Wayland functional doubled the codebase. X11 is solid, but I need more testing in Wayland compositors (Sway, Hyprland, KDE, GNOME) before merging since I don’t run Wayland on my machines.
If you’re on Wayland with a gamepad, I’d appreciate testers. Bug reports and PRs welcome. AUR packages won’t be updated until the SDL3 branch is confirmed stable and I bump to v2.
Features :
- Full QWERTY with shortcuts row (undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, select all, Alt+Tab, media keys)
- D-pad navigation with stick-driven mouse cursor
- Modifier support (Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Super, Caps) with visual status indicators
- Button-hold key repeat for backspace, space, enter
- Alt+Tab key for multiple Tab presses
- Auto-reconnect on controller disconnect/timeout
- Configurable button mapping, 60 themes, adjustable opacity
- Sub-1% CPU idle, under 4% during active input
Have you already tested this on Steam Deck? That would be awesome.
Nope. Just on my Arch systems (XFCE w/ X11) & Void Linux w/ X11. I am planning to run through some manual tests in KDE Plasma which should be applicable to Steam Deck and CatchyOS, but I need to build a proper test env. Ive done simple tests in Sway and KDE with nested sessions, but those are just spot checks not full testing. I need to boot into real systems for full testing.
I’ve been wanting a better on-screen keyboard for my TV gaming box. The Steam on-screen keyboard gets cut off at the edges of the screen when I run KDE at 1.25x DPI scale.
Is there any chance that this would work as a Flatpak? The machine I want to use this on runs Bazzite, though it’d be helpful for running it on other distros too.
