TouchView

Wayland overlays for visualizing touchpad/touchscreen gestures and keyboard shortcuts. Shows semi-transparent panels using Layer Shell's OVERLAY layer — sits above all windows and panels, fully click-through.

Useful for demos, screen recordings, and showcasing compositor features.

Example (driftwm window movement):

movement.mp4

Tools

• touchview — finger position overlay: a touchpad (white dots on a dark panel) or a touchscreen (--source touchscreen — circles at the real screen position, fullscreen, like Android's "show touches")
• keyview — keyboard shortcut overlay (shows key combos like "Super + L", "Alt + Tab")

Requirements

• Wayland compositor with layer shell support (sway, Hyprland, etc.)
• gtk4-layer-shell (system package)
• Access to /dev/input/event* (user must be in input group)

Install

pip install touchview

Or with uv:

uv tool install touchview

From source:

git clone https://github.com/malbiruk/touchview.git
cd touchview
pip install .

touchview

Visualizes finger positions in real-time. Two modes:

• touchpad (default) — dots on a dark panel anchored to a screen corner.
• touchscreen (--source touchscreen) — circles drawn at the real finger position on a fullscreen click-through overlay, like Android's "show touches". Ideal for screen-recording touchscreen demos.

touchview [OPTIONS]

Flag	Default	Description
--source	touchpad	touchpad (panel) or touchscreen (fullscreen, absolute)
--rotate	0	Panel rotation 0/90/180/270 (touchscreen mode, if dots don't track)
--dot-color HEX	#ffffff	Finger dot color
--dot-opacity F	0.95	Dot opacity (0-1)
--dot-size PX	18	Dot radius
--glow-size PX	48	Glow radius
--bg-color HEX	#000000	Background color (touchpad mode)
--bg-opacity F	0.6	Background opacity 0-1 (touchpad mode)
--height PX	400	Panel height, width from aspect ratio (touchpad mode)
--radius PX	24	Corner radius (touchpad mode)
--position	bottom-right	Panel position (touchpad mode)
--margin PX	20	Edge margin (touchpad mode)

Touchscreen mode is fullscreen with no backdrop, so --bg-*, --height, --radius, --position, and --margin apply to touchpad (panel) mode only.

# Touchpad: blue-tinted panel, bottom-left
touchview --bg-color '#1a1a2e' --position bottom-left

# Touchscreen: circles at your fingertips, fullscreen — for screen recordings
touchview --source touchscreen

# Rotated tablet — bump --rotate until the circles track your finger
touchview --source touchscreen --rotate 270

keyview

Shows keyboard shortcuts and key combos as an overlay.

• Modifier combos (Ctrl, Alt, Super, Shift + key) display as "Super + L"
• Lone modifier taps show the modifier name
• Auto-fades after timeout

keyview [OPTIONS]

Flag	Default	Description
--bg-color HEX	#000000	Background color
--bg-opacity F	0.6	Background opacity (0-1)
--text-color HEX	#ffffff	Text color
--text-opacity F	0.95	Text opacity (0-1)
--font-size PX	40	Font size
--radius PX	16	Corner radius
--timeout SEC	1.5	Seconds before fade
--position	bottom-left	Window position
--margin PX	20	Edge margin

# Both tools side by side — touchview right, keyview left
touchview --position bottom-right &
keyview --position bottom-left &

Positions

Both tools support: top-left, top, top-right, left, right, bottom-left, bottom, bottom-right

Permissions

sudo usermod -aG input $USER
# then log out and back in