ASUS Zenbook Duo Daemon

This is a daemon that runs on the Zenbook Duo laptop to handle the keyboard and secondary display under linux.

AI Generated Wiki:

Device Support

• ✅ Zenbook Duo 2025 (UX8406CA)
• ✅ Zenbook Duo 2024 (UX8406MA)

Distribution Support

• ✅ Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-8-generic
• ✅ Fedora 42 6.17.13-200.fc42.x86_64
• ⚠️ NixOS: see this fork
• ⚠️ Other distributions may work, but are not tested

Features

• ✅ Enable secondary display when keyboard is detached
• ✅ Disable keyboard backlight when idle
• ✅ Brightness sync between primary and secondary display
• ✅ Remap keys to run custom commands or key combinations

Keyboard Function	Wired Mode	Bluetooth Mode	Default Mapping	Remappable via config file?
Mute Key	✅	✅	KEY_MUTE	❌
Volume Down Key	✅	✅	KEY_VOLUMEDOWN	❌
Volume Up Key	✅	✅	KEY_VOLUMEUP	❌
Keyboard Backlight Key	✅	✅	KEY_BACKLIGHT	✅
Keyboard Backlight Control	✅	❌ (1)	N/A	✅
Brightness Down Key	✅	✅	KEY_BRIGHTNESSDOWN	✅
Brightness Up Key	✅	✅	KEY_BRIGHTNESSUP	✅
Extended Display Mode Key	✅	✅	KEY_LEFT_META + KEY_P	❌
Swap Up Down Display Key	✅	✅	None	✅
Microphone Mute Key	✅	✅	KEY_MICMUTE	✅
Microphone Mute Key LED Control	✅	❌ (2)	N/A	✅
Emoji Picker Key	✅	✅	KEY_LEFTCTRL + KEY_DOT (3)	✅
MyASUS Key	✅	✅	None	✅
Toggle Secondary Display Key	✅	✅	Toggle Secondary Display	✅
Fn + Function Keys	✅	✅	F1 - F12	❌

1. Should be possible, the packet capture file under windows is at pcap/bt_change_backlight.pcapng
2. Should be possible, the packet capture file under windows is at pcap/bt_micmute_led.pcapng
3. This key combination only works for GTK apps in GNOME.

Installation

# Upgrade or install the latest release from GitHub
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PegasisForever/zenbook-duo-daemon/refs/heads/master/install.sh | sudo bash -s install

# Uninstall
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PegasisForever/zenbook-duo-daemon/refs/heads/master/install.sh | sudo bash -s uninstall

# Check logs
systemctl status zenbook-duo-daemon

The install script will:

1. Download the latest release from GitHub and install it to /opt/zenbook-duo-daemon.
2. Create a systemd service file in /etc/systemd/system/zenbook-duo-daemon.service
3. Create a backup of the old config file if it is not compatible with the new config file.
4. Enable and start the service

Configuration

By default, the config file is located at /etc/zenbook-duo-daemon/config.toml. You can edit the fn lock, idle timeout, key mappings and keyboard VID:PID in the config file. The instructions are provided in the config file.

Control Pipe

The daemon creates a named pipe for receiving commands at /tmp/zenbook-duo-daemon.pipe by default (configurable via pipe_path in the config file). The pipe is accessible by all users.

Send commands using echo example:

echo mic_mute_led_toggle > /tmp/zenbook-duo-daemon.pipe

Available commands:

Command	Description
mic_mute_led_toggle	Toggle microphone mute LED
mic_mute_led_on	Turn on microphone mute LED
mic_mute_led_off	Turn off microphone mute LED
backlight_toggle	Cycle keyboard backlight
backlight_off	Turn off keyboard backlight
backlight_low	Set keyboard backlight to low
backlight_medium	Set keyboard backlight to medium
backlight_high	Set keyboard backlight to high
secondary_display_toggle	Toggle secondary display
secondary_display_on	Turn on secondary display
secondary_display_off	Turn off secondary display
suspend_start	Signal suspend start (disables backlight)
suspend_end	Signal suspend end (restores backlight)

Notes:

1. The suspend_start and suspend_end commands are sent automatically by the systemd services zenbook-duo-daemon-pre-sleep and zenbook-duo-daemon-post-sleep to disable keyboard backlight during suspend.
2. The secondary display commands are no-op when the keyboard is attached.

Development

Prerequisites

sudo apt install build-essential libevdev-dev libdbus-1-dev pkg-config autoconf

Build

This is a standard Rust project, you can run the project with:

# Stop the systemctl service to prevent two instances running
sudo systemctl stop zenbook-duo-daemon

cargo run

Or you can build and install the binary to your system with:

cargo build --release
sudo ./install.sh local-install target/release/zenbook-duo-daemon