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matebook-applet

https://github.com/nekr0z/matebook-applet/

System tray applet/control app for Huawei Matebook.

The information below may be outdated. For the latest version, check the repository.

matebook-applet

System tray applet/control app for Huawei Matebook

Build Status codecov

WARNING

Due to a recent Codecov security problem the PGP key that was used to sign binaries and the Debian repository could have been compromised. It is strongly recommended to remove the old key from your trusted apt keyring since it can no longer really be trusted:

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sudo apt-key del F25E85CB21A79726

The repository uses a new key now, you can add it by usual means.

This simple applet is designed to make some of the proprietary Huawei PC Manager’s functionality available via GUI on Linux.

Applet screenshot

It can be used as a system tray applet (above) or as a windowed app (below).

Windowed screenshot

Table of Contents

Help matebook-applet get better!

Join the development! You can also support by sending BTC to 3N983ChqZyFtiep6tNu4tnNcQnDtY2QWps, or to Pay ID 435921757 on Binance.

Installation and setup

The applet requires no installation as such. However, it has dependencies, its functionality may be limited without proper setup, and you may want to add it to autorun so that it gets started automatically when you load your DE. Read on for the details.

Debian

Debian users can add this repo:

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deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/matebook-applet.key] http://evgenykuznetsov.org/repo/ stable main

to their /etc/apt/sources.list and add the public key:

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$ wget -qO - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nekr0z/matebook-applet/master/matebook-applet.key | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/matebook-applet.key

From there, the applet is just a sudo apt install matebook-applet away.

Users report that this way also works on Debian derivatives such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint.

note to pre-2022 users

The repository used to be signed by other public keys, and this README used to recommend adding the key to the system-wide trusted keyring. This practice is no longer recommended by Debian because the key is then trusted by the system to sign any known repository, which is a security weakness. If you installed matebook-applet .deb package via this repository before June 2021, you may still have the old keys in your system-wide trusted keyring, and it’s a good idea to remove them:

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sudo apt-key del 466F4F38E60211B0
sudo apt-key del F25E85CB21A79726
sudo apt-key del FA32B7DDA1A3AC2C

Other Linux

If you’re running a Linux with relatively new kernel version, it already includes the required driver. Make sure your system has GTK+ and libayatana-appindicator installed, download (from the releases page) or build matebook-applet, and it should work in read-only mode right away.

If your system doesn’t have libayatana-appindicator, you can use a legacy build that depends on libappindicator instead.

For pre-5.5 kernels you may need to update the Huawei-WMI driver. The applet requres at least version 3.0 of the driver.

To be able to change settings as opposed to simply displaying them, you either need to run the applet as root (absolutely not recommended), or make sure all the necessary files (the hooks in /sys/devices/platform/huawei-wmi as well as /etc/default/huawei-wmi/ directory) are user-writable. A good way to set everything up is to make use of Rouven Spreckels’ awesome project:

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$ git clone https://github.com/qu1x/huawei-wmi.git
$ cd huawei-wmi/generic
$ sudo make install

You may need to re-login for adding your user to group to take effect.

Old Linux

On Linux kernels earlier than 5.0 the Huawei-WMI driver is not available, so the alternative method should be used.

details

You can make matebook-applet work using the -r command line option and two scripts as explained below. Any one of the scripts is enough, but you need both for full functionality. You may download them both in one archive here. Please note that these scripts are for MateBook 13 and will not work on other MateBooks (you can still get them to work by changing them to address EC registers proper for your particular model, but make sure you know exactly what you’re doing, you’ve been warned).

Both scripts depend on ioport to work, so make sure to install it first. Debian packages are available in main repository, and there is a way to get it on Arch, too.

  • To get battery protection functionality:

    1. Download the batpro script, make it executable and copy to root executables path, i.e.: 
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      # mv batpro /usr/sbin/
    2. Allow your user to execute the script without providing sudo credentials. One way to do this would be to explicitly add sudoers permission (please be aware of possible security implications): 
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      # echo "your_username ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/batpro" >> /etc/sudoers.d/batpro
# chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers.d/batpro
    3. Double check that you can successfully run the script without providing additional authentication (i.e. password): 
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      $ sudo batpro status

  • To get Fn-Lock functionality:

    1. Download the fnlock script, make it executable and copy to root executables path, i.e.:

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      # mv fnlock /usr/sbin/

    2. Allow your user to execute the script without providing sudo credentials. One way to do this would be to explicitly add sudoers permission (please be aware of possible security implications):

       # echo "your_username ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/fnlock" >> /etc/sudoers.d/fnlock
 # chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers.d/fnlock

    3. Double check that you can successfully run the script without providing additional authentication (i.e. password):

       $ sudo fnlock status

Compiling matebook-applet

You can always download precompiled amd64 binary from the releases page, but it’s also perfectly OK to compile matebook-applet yourself. Provided that you have the dependencies (GTK+ and libayatana-appindicator) installed (on Debian you can sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev), all you need to do is:

$ git clone https://github.com/nekr0z/matebook-applet.git
$ cd matebook-applet
$ go build

To build against libappindicator instead, append the last command with -tags=legacy_appindicator.

Usage

The user interface is intentionally as simple as they get. You get an icon in system tray that you can click and get a menu. The menu consists of current status, options to change it, and an option to quit the applet. Please be aware that the applet does not probe for current status on its own (this is intentional), so if you change your battery protection settings by other means it will not reflect the change. Clicking on the status line (top of the menu) updates it.

The entry that shows current Fn-Lock status is clickable, too, that toggles Fn-Lock (from ON to OFF or vice versa). Again, no probing here, so if you change Fn-Lock status by other means it will not reflect the change until clicked, but then it will toggle Fn-Lock again.

Command line option -w launches the applet in windowed (app) mode, i.e.:

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$ matebook-applet -w

Other command line options can be found on the included manpage:

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$ man -l matebook-applet.1
  or, if you installed applet from repository or .deb package,
$ man matebook-applet

Gnome

As of Gnome 3.26 the “legacy tray” is removed. Launching the applet in windowed (app) mode still works. An extension is needed for the system tray icon to show up, for example AppIndicator.

Also, there is a separate native extension by another developer: Huawei WMI Controls, which provides an interface similar to matebook-applet.

Development

Pull requests are always welcome!

Contributing translations

In case you don’t want to install any Go tools, the notion of having to use git scares you, and you don’t feel like figuring out what a pull request is and how to make one, but you still feel like contributing a translation, just drop me an email, we’ll figure something out. ;-)

The intended way to go about contributing translations to the project is using go-i18n tool. Make sure you have it installed and available, clone the repository, and:

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$ cd assets/translations
$ ls
$ touch active.xx.toml

(where xx is your language)

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$ goi18n merge active.*.toml

This will generate translate.xx.toml with all the lines that need to be translated to the language xx. Go ahead and translate it. Please make sure you delete all the messages you don’t feel like translating before the next step, so that English messages don’t creep in disguised as messages in your language.

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$ goi18n merge active.*.toml translate.*.toml

Now all you’ve translated is in active.xx.toml and you can make a pull request.

Credits

This software includes the following software or parts thereof:

Translations:

Packages are built using fpm and changelog.

Big THANK YOU to Ayman Bagabas for all his work and support. Without him, there would be no matebook-applet.

Kudos to Rouven Spreckels for sorting out udev and systemd.

Comments can be sent as webmentions or by email.