Script to rotate the screen and touch devices on modern Linux desktops. Great for convertible laptops.

rotate_desktop.sh

#!/bin/bash
#
# rotate_desktop.sh
#
# Rotates modern Linux desktop screen and input devices to match. Handy for
# convertible notebooks. Call this script from panel launchers, keyboard
# shortcuts, or touch gesture bindings (xSwipe, touchegg, etc.).
#
# Using transformation matrix bits taken from:
#   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/InputCoordinateTransformation
#

# Configure these to match your hardware (names taken from `xinput` output).
TOUCHPAD='SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad'
TOUCHSCREEN='Atmel Atmel maXTouch Digitizer'

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
  echo "Missing orientation."
  echo "Usage: $0 [normal|inverted|left|right] [revert_seconds]"
  echo
  exit 1
fi

function do_rotate
{
  xrandr --output $1 --rotate $2

  TRANSFORM='Coordinate Transformation Matrix'

  case "$2" in
    normal)
      [ ! -z "$TOUCHPAD" ]    && xinput set-prop "$TOUCHPAD"    "$TRANSFORM" 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
      [ ! -z "$TOUCHSCREEN" ] && xinput set-prop "$TOUCHSCREEN" "$TRANSFORM" 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
      ;;
    inverted)
      [ ! -z "$TOUCHPAD" ]    && xinput set-prop "$TOUCHPAD"    "$TRANSFORM" -1 0 1 0 -1 1 0 0 1
      [ ! -z "$TOUCHSCREEN" ] && xinput set-prop "$TOUCHSCREEN" "$TRANSFORM" -1 0 1 0 -1 1 0 0 1
      ;;
    left)
      [ ! -z "$TOUCHPAD" ]    && xinput set-prop "$TOUCHPAD"    "$TRANSFORM" 0 -1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1
      [ ! -z "$TOUCHSCREEN" ] && xinput set-prop "$TOUCHSCREEN" "$TRANSFORM" 0 -1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1
      ;;
    right)
      [ ! -z "$TOUCHPAD" ]    && xinput set-prop "$TOUCHPAD"    "$TRANSFORM" 0 1 0 -1 0 1 0 0 1
      [ ! -z "$TOUCHSCREEN" ] && xinput set-prop "$TOUCHSCREEN" "$TRANSFORM" 0 1 0 -1 0 1 0 0 1
      ;;
  esac
}

XDISPLAY=`xrandr --current | grep primary | sed -e 's/ .*//g'`
XROT=`xrandr --current --verbose | grep primary | egrep -o ' (normal|left|inverted|right) '`

do_rotate $XDISPLAY $1

if [ ! -z "$2" ]; then
  sleep $2
  do_rotate $XDISPLAY $XROT
  exit 0
fi

As an aside, the other day my 8-year-old Yoga 11s started auto-rotating the screen when I physically change the laptop's orientation. Maybe I updated a system package somewhere and it suddenly gained support for my hardware? Wild.

Now that it's finally supported, I'd kind of like to turn it off. 😝 I now prefer setting the rotation manually with global hotkeys set to call the script in this gist. I can see how it would be useful in tablet mode, though.

Thank you so much! This works flawlessly on my XPS 13 2-in-1, even if external monitor connected, which remains unaffected. Touch events on the screen, external mouse and digitizer work on spot. Finally video conferences with a digital and streamable paper at hand.

Thank you for the script.

On yoga 11s with my custom kernel-5.15.31 on Slackware-15 I changed only one line

TOUCHSCREEN='Atmel Atmel maXTouch Digitizer'
vs
TOUCHSCREEN='Atmel Atmel maXTouch Digitizer Touchscreen'

I got similar problem, I write this simple utility app that reads sensors and rotate screen + digitizer.

https://github.com/undg/autorotate