Linux Setup

Linux setup

X11 — nothing to do

The X11 backend (XInput2 listener + XTest emitter) needs no setup script and no group membership. Layout switching goes through your DE's own mechanism, falling back to XKB group locking on bare window managers (i3, openbox, …).

Wayland — one script, once

The Wayland backend reads keyboards via evdev and types via uinput, which needs device access:

./scripts/setup-linux.sh   # from the repo, or see what it does below

The script adds you to the input group and installs a udev rule for /dev/uinput. Log out and back in afterwards — group membership is granted at login. Half-applied state (group added, session old) is the most common "it doesn't work" cause.

Layout switching is implemented for: Hyprland, KDE Plasma, GSettings DEs (GNOME / Ubuntu Unity / Cinnamon / Budgie / Pantheon / MATE), IBus, and Fcitx5.

Running behind keyd / kanata / kmonad

Everything works, with one honest caveat: the key gate (holding your keystrokes back for the few milliseconds a correction is being typed) stands down when a remapper proxies PolterType's own virtual keyboard — it re-checks before every correction and simply falls back to detect-and-repair. You lose nothing except protection against extremely fast typing straight through a correction.

To get the stronger behaviour back under keyd, exclude PolterType's virtual device in your keyd config — the exact one-liner is in docs/PERMISSIONS.md.

What renders where

• The spelling-suggestions tooltip currently draws on wlroots compositors (Hyprland, Sway — layer-shell) and X11. On GNOME/KDE Wayland the engine still works but the tooltip has no surface to draw on yet (help wanted).
• Per-app features (skip list, per-app wordlist profiles, apps = scoping on smart commands) need a focus tracker, which exists on Hyprland and X11 — on other Wayland compositors they do nothing.