Weylus

Weylus is a tool that lets you use a tablet or smartphone as a drawing tablet and touch input device for your desktop computer. You install Weylus on your computer, run it, and then open a web address in the browser on your tablet. No special app is required on the tablet side: any modern browser works, including Safari on iPadOS 13 or later and Firefox 80 or later on Android.

Once connected, you can control your computer's mouse pointer using the tablet's touchscreen. Your computer's screen is mirrored to the tablet so you can see what you are doing. If your tablet has a stylus, and you are on Linux, Weylus passes the pen pressure and tilt data through to drawing applications like Krita or Xournal++, making it usable as a proper artist's input device. Multi-touch gestures also work on Linux.

On Linux there are additional capabilities beyond what Windows and macOS support. You can capture a specific application window instead of mirroring the whole screen, use your tablet as an extended second display rather than just a mirror, and benefit from faster screen streaming. Hardware-accelerated video encoding is available on all platforms through the computer's GPU, which reduces the latency of the screen feed.

Setting up Weylus involves downloading the release for your operating system and, on Linux, configuring the system to allow Weylus to generate input events. The README walks through the required commands for that. The program can also be run headless from the command line without a graphical interface, which is useful for automated setups.

Weylus is written in Rust and is available as pre-built binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Linux users can also install it through the Arch User Repository. The project notes that it should only be used on trusted networks because the connection between the computer and tablet is not encrypted by default.