Haptic/visual/audio feedback for GNOME
feedbackd provides a DBus daemon (feedbackd) to act on events to provide haptic, visual and audio feedback. It offers a library (libfeedback) and GObject introspection bindings to ease using it from applications.
License
feedbackd is licensed under the GPLv3+ while the libfeedback library is licensed under LGPL 2.1+.
Getting the source
git clone https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/feedbackd
cd feedbackd
The master branch has the current development version.
Dependencies
On a Debian based system run
sudo apt-get -y install build-essential
sudo apt-get -y build-dep .
For an explicit list of dependencies check the Build-Depends
entry in the
debian/control file.
Building
We use the meson (and thereby Ninja) build system for feedbackd. The quickest way to get going is to do the following:
meson . _build
ninja -C _build
ninja -C _build test
ninja -C _build install
Running
Running from the source tree
To run the daemon use
_build/run
You can introspect and get the current theme with
gdbus introspect --session --dest org.sigxcpu.Feedback --object-path /org/sigxcpu/Feedback
and to request feedback for an event
gdbus call --session --dest org.sigxcpu.Feedback --object-path /org/sigxcpu/Feedback --method org.sigxcpu.Feedback.Feedback 'my.app.id' 'phone-incoming-call' '[]' 0
See examples/
for a simple python example using GObject introspection.
How it works
We're using a event naming spec similar to http://0pointer.de/public/sound-naming-spec.html to name events. This will allow us to act as a system sound library so applications only need to call into this library and things like the quiet and silent profile work out of the box.
Feedback theme
Events are then mapped to a specific type of feedback (sound, led, vibra) via a device specific theme (since devices have different capabilities).
There's currently only a single hard coded theme named default
. The currently
available feedback types are:
- Sound (an audible sound from the sound naming spec)
- VibraRumble: haptic motor rumbling
- VibraPeriodic: periodic feedback from the haptic motor
- Led: Feedback via blinking LEDs
You can check the feedback theme and the classes (prefixed with Fbd) for available properties. Note that the feedback theme API (including the theme file format) is not stable but considered internal to the daemon.
Profiles
The profile determines which parts of the theme are in use:
full
: Use configured events from thefull
,quiet
andsilent
parts of the feedback them.quiet
: Usequiet
andsilent
part from of the feedback theme. This usually means no audio feedback.silent
: Only use thesilent
part from the feedback theme. This usually means to not use audio or vibra.
It can be set via a GSetting
gsettings set org.sigxcpu.feedbackd profile full
fbcli
fbcli
can be used to trigger feedback for different events. Here are some examples:
Phone call
Run feedbacks for event phone-incoming-call
until explicitly stopped:
_build/cli/fbcli -t 0 -E phone-incoming-call
New instant message
Run feedbacks for event message-new-instant
just once:
_build/cli/fbcli -t -1 -E message-new-instant
Alarm clock
Run feedbacks for event message-new-instant
for 10 seconds:
_build/cli/fbcli -t 10 -E alarm-clock-elapsed
Per app profiles
One can set the feedback profile of an individual application
via GSettings
. E.g. for an app with app id sm.puri.Phosh
to set the profile to quiet
do:
GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR=_build/data/ gsettings set org.sigxcpu.feedbackd.application:/org/sigxcpu/feedbackd/application/sm-puri-phosh/ profile quiet