What is input-remapper?

Input Remapper is a Linux desktop application that lets you change how your input devices behave. You can remap keys on a keyboard, reassign buttons on a gamepad or mouse, redirect joystick movements, and configure triggers or scroll wheels. Any input can be mapped to any other input: a keyboard key can trigger a mouse movement, a gamepad button can send a key combination, and so on. The tool works on both X11 and Wayland, the two main display systems used on Linux desktops. It runs as a background system service and intercepts device input at a low level, so mappings apply across all applications without needing per-app configuration. A graphical interface lets you set up and manage your mappings without editing configuration files by hand. Beyond simple remapping, the tool supports programmable macros: sequences of keystrokes or actions that are triggered by a single button press or joystick event. Separate documentation pages linked from the README cover macro syntax and example configurations. Installation varies by distribution. On Ubuntu and Debian, a prebuilt .deb package is available on the releases page, and it is also in the official Debian and Ubuntu repositories. Fedora and Arch users can install it through their standard package managers. For other Linux distributions, the README lists the Python dependencies needed to build and install it manually using pip and an included install script. Version 2.0 and later require Ubuntu 22.04 or an equivalent. After installation, the background service needs to be enabled once so that mappings are active automatically after each reboot.