A GNOME/GTK4 USB-C cable and power diagnostic viewer for Linux.

This is a Linux-native reimplementation inspired by darrylmorley/whatcable. It reads kernel sysfs Type-C and USB Power Delivery classes and presents a plain-English summary of each port.

• Reads /sys/class/typec for Type-C ports, partners, cables, roles, and identity VDOs when the kernel exposes them.
• Reads /sys/class/usb_power_delivery for advertised source PDOs when available.
• Provides both a GNOME/libadwaita UI and a --json/--raw CLI.
• Runs without root for read-only sysfs access.

Linux support depends on your machine's Type-C/PD driver. If firmware handles PD negotiation without exposing identity/capability data to the kernel, the app can only show the subset present in sysfs.

meson setup build
meson test -C build
meson install -C build
whatcable-linux --json --raw
whatcable-linux

The first version is designed to work as a normal read-only Flatpak app. The default sandbox exposes the relevant sysfs paths read-only on current Flatpak: /sys/class, /sys/bus, /sys/dev, and /sys/devices.

Build locally with:

flatpak-builder --user --install --force-clean build-flatpak build-aux/com.nedrichards.WhatCable.json
flatpak run com.nedrichards.WhatCable

If rofiles-fuse is not available in the build environment, add --disable-rofiles-fuse to the flatpak-builder command.

build-aux/stable/com.nedrichards.WhatCable.json is the release-style manifest intended for Flathub submission. It builds from the published v0.1.0 Git tag instead of the local checkout.

The AppStream metadata lives in data/com.nedrichards.WhatCable.metainfo.xml. It includes the project URLs, content rating, release entry, and screenshot required for a Flathub review.

WhatCable Linux is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later. See COPYING for the full license text.

Co-authored with a bunch of different AIs