themaniskshah / solaar

Linux device manager for Logitech devices

title	layout
Solaar	default

Solaar is a Linux manager for many Logitech keyboards, mice, and trackpads that connect wirelessly to a USB Unifying, Bolt, Lightspeed, or Nano receiver, connect directly via a USB cable, or connect via Bluetooth. Solaar does not work with peripherals from other companies.

Documentation here is for the current version of Solaar. Some Linux distributions distribute old versions of Solaar. If you are using an old version and something described here does not work you should upgrade using one of the methods described below.

Solaar can be used as a GUI application or via its command-line interface. Both interfaces are able to list the connected devices and show information about each device, often including battery status. Solaar is able to pair and unpair devices with receivers as supported by the device and receiver. Solaar can also control some changeable features of devices, such as scroll wheel direction and function key behavior. Solaar keeps track of these changed settings on a per-computer basis and the GUI application restores them whenever a device connects. (Devices forget most settings when powered down.) For more information on how to use Solaar see the usage page, and for more information on its capabilities see the capabilities page.

Solaar's GUI normally uses an icon in the system tray and starts with its main window visible. This aspect of Solaar depends on having an active system tray, which is not the default situation for recent versions of Gnome. For information on to set up a system tray under Gnome see the capabilities page.

Solaar's GUI can be started in several ways

• --window=show (the default) starts with its main window visible,
• --window=hide starts with its main window hidden,
• --window=only does not use the system tray, and starts with main window visible.

For more information on Solaar's command-line interface use the help option, as in solaar --help.

Solaar does not process normal input from devices. It is thus unable to fix problems that arise from incorrect handling of mouse movements or keycodes by Linux drivers or other software.

Solaar has progressed past version 1.0. Problems with earlier versions should not be reported as bugs. Instead, upgrade to a recent version or manually install the current version from GitHub. Some capabilities of Solaar have been developed by observing the behavior of Logitech receivers and devices and generalizing from these observations. If your Logitech receiver or device behaves strangely this may be caused by an incorrect behavior generalization. Please report such experiences by creating an issue in the Solaar repository.

Supported Devices

Solaar will detect all devices paired with supported Unifying, Bolt, Lightspeed, or Nano receivers, and at the very least display some basic information about them. Solaar will detect some Logitech devices that connect via a USB cable or Bluetooth.

Solaar can pair and unpair a Logitech device showing the Unifying logo (Solaar's version of the logo) with any Unifying receiver, and pair and unpair a Logitech device showing the Bolt logo with any Bolt receiver, and can pair and unpair Lightspeed devices with Lightspeed receivers for the same model. Solaar can pair some Logitech devices with Logitech Nano receivers but not all Logitech devices can be paired with Nano receivers. Logitech devices without a Unifying or Bolt logo generally cannot be paired with Unifying or Bolt receivers.

Solaar does not handle connecting or disconnecting via Bluetooth, which is done using the usual Bluetooth mechanisms.

For a partial list of supported devices and their features, see the devices page.

Prebuilt packages

Up-to-date prebuilt packages are available for some Linux distros (e.g., Fedora 33+) in their standard repositories. If a recent version of Solaar is not available from the standard repositories for your distribution you can try one of these packages.

• Arch solaar package in the community repository
• Ubuntu/Kubuntu 16.04+: use the solaar package from universe repository
• Ubuntu/Kubuntu stable packages: use the Solaar stable ppa, courtesy of gogo
• Ubuntu/Kubuntu git build packages: use the Solaar git ppa, courtesy of gogo
• a Gentoo package, courtesy of Carlos Silva and Tim Harder
• a Mageia package, courtesy of David Geiger

Solaar uses a standard system tray implementation; solaar-gnome3 is no longer required for gnome or unity integration.

Manual installation

See the installation page for the step-by-step procedure for manual installation.

Known Issues

• If some icons appear broken in the application, make sure you've properly configured the Gtk theme and icon theme in your control panel.

• Solaar normally uses icon names for its icons, which in some system tray implementatations results in missing or wrong-sized icons. The --tray-icon-size option forces Solaar to use icon files of appropriate size for tray icons instead, which produces better results in some system tray implementatations. To use icon files close to 32 pixels in size use --tray-icon-size=32.

• The icon in the system tray can show up as 'black on black' in dark themes or as non-symbolic when the theme uses symbolic icons. This is due to problems in some system tray implementations. Changing to a different theme may help. The --battery-icons=symbolic option can be used to force symbolic icons.

• Sometimes the system tray icon does not show up. The cause of this is unknown. Either wait a while and try again or try with the --window=hide option.

• Running the command-line application while the GUI application is also running may occasionally cause either of them to become confused about the state of the devices.

• Some Linux drivers view or modify the setting Scroll Wheel Resolution to implement smooth scrolling. If Solaar changes this setting after the driver is set up scrolling can be either very fast or very slow. To fix this problem click on the icon at the right edge of the setting to set it to "Ignore this setting". The mouse has to be reset (e.g., by turning it off and on again) before this fix will take effect.

• Many gaming mice and keyboards have both the ONBOARD PROFILES feature and the REPORT RATE feature. On these devices changing the Polling Rate setting requires modifying a setting in the ONBOARD PROFILES feature, which can modify how the device works. Changing the Polling Rate setting to "Ignore this setting" (see above) prevents Solaar from modifying the ONBOARD PROFILES feature. The device has to be reset (e.g., by turning it off and on again) before this fix will take effect.

License

This software is distributed under the terms of the GNU Public License, v2.

Thanks

This project began as a third-hand clone of Noah K. Tilton's logitech-solar-k750 project on GitHub (no longer available). It was developed further thanks to the diggings in Logitech's HID++ protocol done by many other people:

• Julien Danjou, who also provided some internal Logitech documentation
• Lars-Dominik Braun
• Alexander Hofbauer
• Clach04
• Peter Wu
• Nestor Lopez Casado provided some more Logitech specifications for the HID++ protocol

Also, thanks to Douglas Wagner, Julien Gascard, and Peter Wu for helping with application testing and supporting new devices.