What is piper?

Piper is a graphical application for Linux that lets you configure gaming mice through a point-and-click interface. Instead of using command-line tools, you adjust settings across separate pages for resolution (DPI sensitivity), button assignments, and LED lighting colors. The interface is built with GTK, the same toolkit used by many applications in the GNOME desktop environment. Piper does not communicate with the mouse hardware on its own. It is a visual frontend that relies on a background service called ratbagd, which is part of a separate project called libratbag. Piper sends your configuration choices to ratbagd through a system communication channel called DBus, and ratbagd applies those settings to the physical device. You need ratbagd installed and running on your system before Piper will function. The range of mice Piper can configure depends entirely on libratbag, not on Piper itself. Each supported device requires the device's communication protocol to be reverse-engineered, which means the features available for a given mouse may not match everything the manufacturer advertises. The libratbag project maintains a list of all known supported devices. If Piper displays an error page showing a mousetrap graphic, it typically means ratbagd is not running, needs to be updated, or some other unexpected condition has occurred. Installation instructions are on the project's wiki. For those who want to build from source, Piper uses the Meson build system, and the README includes the specific commands to clone, configure, build, and install. The project is released under the GPLv2 open-source license.