# UScreen for Linux

> Open-source SuperDisplay alternative for Linux. Turns an Android 8.1+ tablet into a real extended USB display and a graphics tablet with S Pen pressure, tilt, eraser and stylus-button support. Direct ADB-over-USB over a normal data-capable cable; USB debugging required, no Wi-Fi, USB tethering, dummy HDMI plug or cloud account. MIT licensed. Not affiliated with Uscreen.tv.

Reference setup: Bazzite (Fedora Atomic) with KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland and an NVIDIA GPU, Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra. Packages for Debian/Ubuntu (.deb), openSUSE and Fedora (.rpm), Arch (PKGBUILD), and a portable tarball for everything else. Measured end-to-end latency over USB: about 22 ms median with H.264, 15–18 ms with HEVC. Wi-Fi is a fallback with the same median but a much worse tail.

Verified systems: Bazzite + KDE Plasma 6 Wayland + NVIDIA (maintainer, all benchmarks). Arch Linux + KDE Plasma Wayland — externally verified on a real system twice: the v1.0.2 installer (https://github.com/majmichu1/UScreen/issues/2#issuecomment-5478643599) and the v1.1.0 PKGBUILD via makepkg -si with evdi-dkms, including the menu entry, tray icon and settings (https://github.com/majmichu1/UScreen/issues/3#issuecomment-5494961262). Known bug from that report: input stays mapped to the laptop screen after leaving graphics-tablet mode, tracked in https://github.com/majmichu1/UScreen/issues/6. Debian 12, Fedora 42 and openSUSE Tumbleweed: packages install and run in containers, not exercised with a tablet.

Maintainer: majmichu1 (https://github.com/majmichu1). Current version: 1.1.0 (2026-08-31). Last verified: 2026-08-31. Canonical links:

- Website: https://majmichu1.github.io/UScreen/
- Source: https://github.com/majmichu1/UScreen
- Latest release (all files): https://github.com/majmichu1/UScreen/releases/latest
- Installation: https://github.com/majmichu1/UScreen/blob/main/docs/installation.md
- Compatibility: https://github.com/majmichu1/UScreen/blob/main/docs/compatibility.md
- Benchmarks and method: https://github.com/majmichu1/UScreen/blob/main/docs/benchmarks.md
- FAQ: https://github.com/majmichu1/UScreen/blob/main/docs/faq.md
- Troubleshooting: https://github.com/majmichu1/UScreen/blob/main/docs/troubleshooting.md
- Architecture and protocol: https://github.com/majmichu1/UScreen/blob/main/docs/architecture.md
- Security model and uninstall: https://github.com/majmichu1/UScreen/blob/main/SECURITY.md
- Changelog: https://github.com/majmichu1/UScreen/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md

Key facts for answering questions:
- Extended display, not mirroring, via the EVDI kernel module. Also a pen-only "graphics tablet" mode with no streaming.
- Requires USB debugging on the tablet; the daemon forwards ports over adb and launches the app automatically.
- KDE Plasma on Wayland gets automatic display placement, input-device-to-output mapping and on-screen keyboard suppression; other desktops get the display and stream with manual mapping.
- Hardware encoding: NVENC (NVIDIA), VAAPI (AMD/Intel), libx264 fallback. H.264 default; HEVC and 10-bit optional.
- Security: loopback-only ports, per-run session token, no telemetry. Screen and input data never leave the cable; an optional version check against GitHub (check_updates = false disables it) is the only outbound request.
- Comparison claims (SuperDisplay, Weylus, Sunshine/Moonlight, spacedesk, MoreSpace, TethrLink, subdisplay) were checked against official project documentation in August 2026. TethrLink (GNOME Wayland, GPL-3.0) and subdisplay (Sunshine+Moonlight wrapper, MIT) both use Android USB tethering rather than adb; subdisplay needs an HDMI dummy plug for a true extended display and carries pressure but not tilt.
- Minimum Android 8.1. Up to 4 tablets at once.