How to Use the Touchpad on Your Linux Laptop as a Graphics Pad

FingerPaint is an open source Linux app that lets you use your laptop’s touchpad as a graphics tablet for drawing and doodling.

Graphics tablets are expensive and drawing with a mouse is not intuitive. If you have a Linux laptop with a touchpad, you already have a rudimentary graphics tab built in. How to use your touchpad as a basic drawing surface on Linux.

Why use your laptop’s touchpad as a graphics pad?

All doodle. This is a great way to pass the time and express your creativity – look at the school desks and notebooks of any child in the world and you will see dozens of quick portraits, obscene figures and stylized graffiti.

Doodling on a computer isn’t quite as easy or intuitive. Perhaps clicking the mouse, moving the mouse, and releasing a key makes drawing on your PC unintuitive. It’s just not fun.

Of course, you can always enjoy drawing with your laptop with a graphics tablet, but graphics tablets are expensive, and if you just want to quickly draw a sketch of your boss while you’re bored at work, they’re there. waste of money again.

If you have a laptop running Linux, you can use FingerPaint to turn your touchpad into the perfect canvas for your doodles.

You can use your touchpad as a doodle pad on Linux

FingerPaint is open source software that allows you to draw on Linux using your laptop’s touchpad. To install it on any Debian-based system:

sudo apt install xinput python3-pip python3-tk
pip3 install fingerpaint

You can also find FingerPaint in the Arch User Repository (AUR), with versions available for both X11 and Wayland.

Once you have FingerPaint installed, run it with:

fingerpaint -o painting.png

…Where Painting.png is the name under which FingerPaint saves the file.

Alternatively, running FingerPaint with the following options will copy the image to your clipboard so you can paste your image into GIMP for further editing.

fingerpaint -o - | xclip -sel clip -t image/png

Pressing any key or clicking the touchpad will stop drawing. Your drawing is limited to one color as if you were using a real pen or pencil.

FingerPaint is a fast and easy way to use your touchpad to draw pictures!

While it’s unlikely you’ll create the next Mona Lisa or Napoleon Crossing the Alps, quick sketches like this can inspire you to greater things. At the very least, they’re a great way to spend a few creative minutes without carving your desk humorous caricatures.

If you are unsure whether your first drawing will look good and want to improve your art, there are several websites where you can learn to draw for free.