Common Issues

Common Tablet PC Issues

A low battery is reported when I bring my tablet PC pen into proximity

Symptoms:

• When I bring my tablet PC pen into proximity, a low-battery warning often appears
• When I look at the pen's battery level inside the GNOME control panel, it jumps between 0% and another value

Causes:

• Tablet PC pens report a battery level of 0% for the first few milliseconds after entering proximity. This value corrects itself shortly afterward, but may still trigger a low-battery alert or alarm on your system.
• Low battery

Solutions:

• Ignore the warning until a workaround for this issue is added to the driver.
• If the battery is actually low, you may need to replace or recharge it.

The button on the eraser end of my tablet PC pen does nothing, or mutes my microphone

Symptoms:

• The button on the eraser end of your tablet PC pen doesn't seem to do anything
• Pressing the button on the eraser end of your tablet PC pen mutes your microphone

Causes:

• The keyboard shortcuts sent by the Bluetooth button are not supported by the Linux desktop. See this bug for details.
• Bluetooth button is not paired to system
• Bluetooth button battery is dead

Solutions:

• No solution at this time.

At the moment there is no way to get the Bluetooth button on the eraser end of your tablet PC working in Linux. The button

The upper button on the side of my pen does nothing

Symptoms:

• Nothing seems to happen when you press the top button on the tablet PC pen

Causes:

• Most tablet PC pens are configured to have the upper button enable eraser functionality. Unless you are inside an application like GIMP or Krita which treats the eraser differently, pressing the button will not appear to do anything. You must hold the button as long as you want to eraser inside these applications.

Solutions:

• If you would prefer the upper button to perform a right-click, a partial workaround is to use xsetwacom to change its behavior. If you run xsetwacom set <eraser> button 1 3, you should be able to right-click by holding the button and tapping the screen. It is not possible at this time to trigger a right-click only by pressing the button.

Common Wacom branded Display and Opaque Tablet Issues

The bottom button of my pen does nothing

Symptoms:

• Nothing seems to happen when you press the lower button on the side of your pen

Causes:

• The lower pen button is configured by default to send a middle-click. Many applications do not perform any action when middle click is performed.

Solutions:

• You can change the action that is performed when pressing the lower button with the help of xsetwacom. Try running xsetwacom set <stylus> button 2 <action> with actions like key +CTRL to hold down the control key, or key ] to send a right-bracket key.

My tablet does not show up in the control panel (but otherwise works)

Symptoms:

• You see the following message in the control panel: "No tablet detected. Please plug in or turn on your Wacom tablet."
• The cursor moves in response to your pen

Causes:

• The most likely cause of this problem is a missing libwacom tablet definition. The control panel relies on libwacom to get tablet information and will show this message if no information is available.

Solutions:

• Install the latest libwacom library version.
• File a libwacom bug requesting a tablet definition file for your device.
• Create a tablet definition file for your device, save it inside /usr/share/libwacom, and share it with libwacom developers.

A second cursor appears when I bring the pen into proximity

Symptoms:

• A cross-shaped cursor appears when I bring the pen into proximity and moves around with it
• The mouse pointer does not move when I bring the pen into proximity

Causes:

• The GNOME desktop's Wayland compositor creates an independent cursor for pen input by design.

Solutions:

• Ignore the second cursor
• Switch to an Xorg session of GNOME by logging out, clicking the gear icon next to the login button, selecting "GNOME on Xorg" (or another non-GNOME desktop), and log in.