Custom hot key programming with acpid
Key In
© Nikolai Sorokin, Fotolia
A little research from the command line and a short script bends your keyboard to your will.
Linux support for laptops has improved by leaps and bounds in the last decade. At this point, if you buy a laptop from any of the major manufacturers and load a Linux distro with a reasonably recent kernel version, things pretty much "just work" – problems with proprietary display drivers aside.
What can sometimes not work, however, are some of the vendor-specific hot keys on the keyboard. For example, I do a lot of presentations, and I'd like the hot key that's supposed to switch between my laptop display and an external monitor (Fn+F7 on my ThinkPad) to work under Linux. In this article, I describe my solution for this problem and offer some pointers for customizing hot key events.
Getting to Know acpid
Most Linux systems support ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface [1]), a popular standard for device configuration and power management. The ACPI standard specifies a structure for defining and customizing hardware events. In Linux, the acpid daemon [2] listens for ACPI events and maps each event to an action. Hot key events are typically handled by acpid.
[...]
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
EndeavorOS Mercury Neo Available
A new release from the EndeavorOS team ships with Plasma 6.3 and other goodies.
-
Fedora 42 Beta Has Arrived
The Fedora Project has announced the availability of the first beta release for version 42 of the open-source distribution.
-
Dash to Panel Maintainer Quits
Charles Gagnon has stepped away as maintainer of the popular Dash to Panel Gnome extension.
-
CIQ Releases Security-Hardened Version of Rocky Linux
If you're looking for an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that is hardened for business use, there's a new version of Rocky Linux that's sure to make you and your company happy.
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.