Input, Audio, and Clipboard

The agent supports keyboard, mouse, tablet, gamepad, audio, and clipboard forwarding.

Keyboard and Mouse

Keyboard and mouse input works immediately after installation. The installer sets up the necessary permissions automatically.

• Full keyboard -- all keys including function keys, media keys, and modifier combinations
• Mouse -- movement, left/right/middle click, scroll wheel, and side buttons
• Relative and absolute positioning -- the agent handles both modes depending on the viewer

VDO forwards keyboard input as physical key positions, not as already-translated characters. The Linux desktop layout on the host decides what a punctuation key produces.

For reliable punctuation, match the Linux host layout to the physical keyboard you are using in the browser. For example:

• US Mac or US PC keyboard to Linux: use an English (US) layout on the Linux host.
• UK or ISO Mac keyboard to Linux: use an English (UK) layout on the Linux host.
• On a UK Mac keyboard, ~ is on the #/~ key. If the Linux host is set to a US layout, that same physical key is treated as the US backslash key, so Shift produces | instead of ~.

When connecting from macOS to a Linux host, the viewer maps Cmd to Ctrl by default so Linux shortcuts such as Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V match Mac muscle memory. You can change this from the Input tab in the connection toolbar. Right Option can still be used as the remote Meta/Super key when the host-key toggle is enabled.

Wacom Tablet

Pressure-sensitive drawing tablets are supported:

• Pressure -- full pressure range is forwarded
• Tilt -- pen tilt data is forwarded for supported tablets
• Works with applications like Krita, GIMP, Blender, and other pressure-aware software

No additional configuration is needed. The agent creates a virtual tablet device when tablet input is received.

Gamepad

Xbox-compatible gamepad input is forwarded from the viewer to the agent:

• Button presses, analog sticks, and triggers
• Works with games and applications that support standard gamepad input
• The viewer must have a gamepad connected locally

Audio

Audio from the remote machine is streamed to the viewer automatically if a sound server is running.

Supported sound servers:

• PipeWire (default on modern distros)
• PulseAudio

By default, the agent tries native PipeWire audio first. On known-bad Rocky 9 / PipeWire combinations, auto mode can degrade to parec because that path is stable for the same stereo Opus stream. To force a backend for diagnosis, set VDO_AUDIO_MODE to native, pw-record, or parec and restart vdo-agent.

If audio is not working, check that one of these is running:

# Check PipeWire
systemctl --user status pipewire

# Check PulseAudio
systemctl --user status pulseaudio

Clipboard

Bidirectional clipboard sharing allows copy/paste between the viewer and the remote machine.

Requirements:

• xclip must be installed for X11 sessions

Install it if missing:

# Rocky / Fedora
sudo dnf install xclip

# Ubuntu
sudo apt install xclip

Once installed, Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V works across the connection just like a local clipboard.

Troubleshooting Input Issues

If keyboard or mouse is not responding:

1. Check that the agent is running: systemctl --user status vdo-agent
2. Restart the agent: systemctl --user restart vdo-agent
3. Ensure permissions were set up correctly by re-running the installer