NextTabletDriver

A modern, low-latency tablet driver for osu!, digital art, and everyday pen input. Built in Rust with a native egui interface, cross-platform device support, and precise mapping controls.

Attribution notice: The tablet configuration files under tablets/OpenTabletDriver are a git submodule pinned to the OpenTabletDriver project, licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 (LGPLv3). This submodule keeps OpenTabletDriver's LGPLv3-licensed content separate from NextTabletDriver's own MIT license, it is not copied into the MIT-licensed source tree. See the License section for details.

Overview

NextTabletDriver gives players and artists a focused tablet driver with fast input handling, flexible active area mapping, and a clean desktop UI. It is designed to replace vendor-specific drivers when you need consistent behavior across devices and operating systems.

Low latency	Optimized polling, high-priority input threads, and a compact Rust pipeline.
Precise mapping	Active area, target display area, rotation, aspect ratio locking, and display edge snapping.
Cross-platform	Windows support through native input APIs and Linux support through uinput.
Custom UI themes	JSON themes with colors, spacing, semantic colors, and osu! playfield opacity controls.
Developer SDK	Native .dll/.so for embedding the tablet engine directly in third-party apps, with C/C++ and C#/Unity bindings. See docs/SDK.md.
Telemetry and filters	Built-in console, performance panels, Devocub Antichatter, Kalman smoothing, and HandSpeed WebSocket output.

Supported Hardware

The driver ships with community-maintained JSON configurations for many tablet families:

• Wacom, including Intuos, Bamboo, Cintiq, and One devices
• Huion and Kamvas devices
• XP-Pen and UGEE devices
• Gaomon, VEIKK, Artisul, Parblo, XenceLabs, UC-Logic, and more

Tablet definitions are sourced from the tablets/OpenTabletDriver submodule. To add support for a new device, contribute its configuration JSON to OpenTabletDriver upstream, it will be picked up here on the next submodule update. A parser implementation in this repository may still be needed for devices using a new report protocol.

Installation

Windows

1. Download the latest Windows release from the releases page.
2. Run the installer or extract the portable build.
3. Launch next_tablet_driver.exe.

Arch Linux and AUR

An AUR package recipe is provided as nexttabletdriver-git.

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/nexttabletdriver-git.git
cd nexttabletdriver-git
makepkg -si

The package installs the binary, desktop entry, icon, license, and udev rules.

Generic Linux

NextTabletDriver requires access to HID tablet devices and /dev/uinput.

sudo cp scripts/99-nexttabletdriver.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger

This grants access to the current desktop user instantly, no group membership or logout required. If you run the driver from a headless/non-logind session, add your user to the input group instead and log out and back in: sudo usermod -aG input "$USER".

More details are available in scripts/README-linux.md.

Build From Source

Requirements

• Rust 1.97.1 or newer
• pkgconf
• hidapi
• Linux only: gtk3, libxkbcommon, libglvnd, wayland, and uinput support

Build

cargo build --release --locked

The release binary is created at:

target/release/next_tablet_driver

On Linux cross-compilation targets, the binary may be under a target-specific directory such as:

target/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/release/next_tablet_driver

Project Layout

src/
  app/        Application lifecycle, layout, services, update flow
  core/       Configuration models, math, geometry, transforms
  drivers/    Tablet detection, parsers, and device configuration loading
  engine/     Input polling, projection pipeline, OS injection
  filters/    Optional processing filters and statistics output
  settings/   Profile and theme persistence
  ui/         egui panels, widgets, and theme helpers
tablets/      Device JSON definitions (OpenTabletDriver submodule)
scripts/      Linux udev helpers and packaging utilities
resources/    Icons and bundled fonts
sdk/          Native SDK (ntd_sdk.dll / libntd_sdk.so) for third-party integration

Configuration and Themes

Settings are stored as JSON profiles. The UI supports importing and exporting profiles from the File menu.

Custom themes are documented in docs/THEMES.md. Themes can control the main palette, widget styling, spacing, semantic colors, and the opacity of the osu! playfield overlay.

Native SDK

Third-party applications (games, Blender/Unity plugins) can embed NextTabletDriver's engine directly, without requiring the desktop app to be installed or running. See docs/SDK.md for the C and C# APIs, build instructions, and the HID ownership arbitration mechanism.

Developer Notes

Generate local Rust documentation with:

cargo doc --no-deps --open

Run the main validation pass with:

cargo test

For packaging changes on Arch Linux, validate with:

cd packaging/linux
makepkg --printsrcinfo > .SRCINFO
makepkg -si

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Good first contributions include tablet configuration updates, parser fixes, Linux packaging improvements, theme examples, and UI polish.

When adding hardware support, include the device VID/PID, physical dimensions, report parser name, and any initialization reports required by the tablet.

License

NextTabletDriver is distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

Third-Party Licenses

The tablet configuration files under tablets/OpenTabletDriver are a git submodule pinned to OpenTabletDriver, which is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 (LGPLv3). This submodule is a separate, distinct component under the terms of the LGPLv3 and is not relicensed under NextTabletDriver's MIT license. The full text of the LGPLv3 can be found at gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.

Copyright © OpenTabletDriver contributors.