Input Devices

These blocks configure the keyboards and the pointer cursor image. Sweets also routes touchscreen input, offers a pointer-compatible tablet fallback, and can run explicit commands for hardware switch events.

sweets.keyboard{ ... }

Keyboard settings apply to physical keyboards and re-apply on reload.

sweets.keyboard({
  numlock = true,
  repeat_rate = 25,
  repeat_delay = 600,
  layout = "us,lv",
  variant = ",apostrophe",
  options = "grp:alt_shift_toggle,caps:escape",
  model = "pc105",
  rules = "evdev",
})

Sweets locks Num Lock on for each keyboard as it connects, so the numpad works from the start of a session. Set numlock = false to keep the previous behavior where Num Lock starts off.

repeat_rate and repeat_delay control held-key repeat, sent to clients over the Wayland keyboard protocol. To make backspace (or any key) clear faster, raise repeat_rate and/or lower repeat_delay, e.g. repeat_rate = 50 and repeat_delay = 250. Both re-apply to every connected keyboard on reload.

layout, variant, options, model, and rules use standard XKB names. Omit a field to retain the system XKB default, normally derived from XKB_DEFAULT_*. Sweets validates that the complete keymap can compile before accepting a reload, so an invalid layout keeps the active configuration and keymap. Virtual keyboards retain the keymap supplied by their client or input method.

sweets.cursor{ ... }

Cursor settings control the pointer image size and xcursor theme.

sweets.cursor({
  size = 24,
  -- theme = "Adwaita",
})

Changes apply on automatic or manual hot reload. An unknown theme name falls back to whatever the xcursor library resolves.

How client cursors follow

size and theme set the compositor-drawn cursor (empty desktop, window borders). They also drive client cursors through two mechanisms:

1. cursor-shape-v1 (preferred). Modern clients (Zed, recent GTK and Qt, SDL3, …) ask for a named cursor shape and Sweets draws it from the configured theme at the correct size and per-output scale. These clients always match the compositor cursor, including on fractionally scaled outputs, and update live on hot reload.
2. XCURSOR_SIZE / XCURSOR_THEME env vars (fallback). Clients that draw their own xcursor instead of using cursor-shape-v1 read these. Sweets exports them so spawned programs inherit a matching cursor. They are read at startup, so only programs launched afterward pick up a change — already running clients keep their cursor until they restart.

A few GTK/Electron/Firefox builds still take the cursor theme and size from GSettings (org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-theme / cursor-size) via the desktop portal. If such an app does not follow the mechanisms above, set the same values there too:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-theme 'breeze_cursors'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-size 24

Touchscreens and tablet tools

Touchscreen contacts are delivered natively through the Wayland touch protocol. They keep their initial target surface until release, support multiple contacts, and update idle activity like pointer and keyboard input. Tapping an XDG window focuses it.

Sweets advertises tablet-v2 for tablet-aware Wayland applications. Pen motion, tip and stylus buttons, pressure, distance, tilt, rotation, slider, and wheel axes are delivered through the native tablet protocol. Tablet pads attached to the same libinput device group forward pad buttons, rings, and strips to that application too.

On surfaces that do not bind tablet-v2, a tablet remains useful through the pointer fallback: pen motion moves the cursor and tip/button events become regular pointer events. sweetctl inputs lists a separate tablet_pad entry when the hardware exposes one.

sweets.bindswitch(selector, command)

Hardware switch events do nothing by default. Bind an explicit command when a device changes state:

sweets.bindswitch("lid:closed", "veila")
sweets.bindswitch("lid:closed", "sweetctl output all power off")
sweets.bindswitch("lid:open", "sweetctl output all power on")

on and off are accepted as aliases for every switch state. Multiple commands can match the same event and run in config order. Commands are spawned detached, just like sweets.bind(..., "spawn", command).