xkbcli

xkbcli command [arguments]xkbcli [--help | --version]

xkbcli is the user-facing front-end shipped with libxkbcommon, the keymap library used by Wayland compositors, the X.Org server (since 1.20), GTK, Qt, EFL and most modern toolkits. It exposes the library's compilation, lookup and inspection APIs as a single multiplexed binary with sub-commands.It is most often used in three ways. First, xkbcli list answers the question "which layouts/variants does my system know about?" — the same data shown by graphical keyboard pickers but in a machine-parseable form. Second, xkbcli compile-keymap reproduces exactly what a compositor or X server does when it compiles a keymap, which is invaluable when diagnosing why a custom layout is not being applied. Third, the interactive-* sub-commands print the live keysym, modifier state, group and Unicode codepoint of every keypress, making xkbcli the equivalent of xev(1) for the libxkbcommon era.The tool relies on the system's xkeyboard-config data files (typically under /usr/share/X11/xkb), so its output reflects the keymaps that any libxkbcommon-based program would see.

--help

Show usage and exit.

Print the libxkbcommon version and exit.

compile-keymap

Compile an RMLVO (rules + model + layout + variant + options) keymap source into the keymap text format and print it. Accepts --rules, --model, --layout, --variant, --options and --keymap.

Compile a Compose file and print the resulting Compose table.

Show every keysym/key combination that produces the given Unicode codepoint (decimal, or 0x hex).

Interactive XKB debugger reading raw events from /dev/input/eventN; usually requires root or membership in the input group.

Interactive XKB debugger using the live X11 keymap.

Interactive XKB debugger using the live Wayland keymap.

Print all rules, models, layouts, variants and options known to libxkbcommon. Optionally filter with --ruleset.

interactive-evdev reads raw kernel input events and therefore needs read access to /dev/input/event\*; on most distributions this means root or membership of the input group. interactive-wayland and interactive-x11 are only built when their respective headers are available at compile time, so they may be missing on minimal installations. The list sub-command shows what is shipped on the system, not what is currently active — use the compositor or setxkbmap -query for that.

libxkbcommon was forked from libxkbfile/xkbcomp in 2012 by Daniel Stone and Ran Benita to provide a modern, X-server-independent XKB implementation usable by Wayland compositors. The xkbcli umbrella tool was added later as a single entry point for the family of debugging utilities (replacing the per-tool xkbcompose, xkbgetkeymap, etc.). It is now distributed by every major Linux distribution as part of the libxkbcommon-tools / libxkbcommon-utils package.

xkbcomp(1), setxkbmap(1), xev(1), localectl(1)