Internal Keyboard

Turn one keyboard off while an external one is in use, and back on when you need it, from the control center, a bar widget, or a text console. The TTY consoles keep working, so a disabled keyboard can always be re-enabled without unplugging anything or rebooting.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	goldesquemoon/internal-keyboard
Entries	Service: service; shortcut: toggle; bar widget: keyboard

Screenshots

Control center — keyboard off	Control center — keyboard on	OSD on every toggle

Requirements

Requirement	Why
sudo	The service calls the backend without a password prompt.
udevadm	Re-announces the keyboard so libinput re-reads the ignore property.
sh	The backend and the setup script are POSIX shell.
A libinput-based compositor	Niri, Hyprland, Sway and friends. The switch happens on the libinput layer, so Xorg sessions are not supported.
One-time root setup	sudo ./setup.sh inside this plugin's directory.

setup.sh installs two files and can be re-run at any time:

• /usr/local/bin/internal-keyboard - the backend CLI (root:root, 0755)
• /etc/sudoers.d/internal-keyboard - passwordless on, off, toggle and select for that one script

It then delegates to internal-keyboard select, which writes the two pieces that know about the keyboard: /etc/internal-keyboard/device-name and /etc/udev/rules.d/90-internal-keyboard.rules.

By default the built-in keyboard is the event node under i8042/serio0, which is where the PS/2 keyboard lives on virtually every laptop. Use --device "Some Keyboard" to install with another keyboard selected, internal-keyboard devices to list the candidates, or the Keyboard setting to switch later without touching the shell.

Usage

Add the tile once under Settings -> Control center -> Shortcuts -> Internal Keyboard, or write it into ~/.config/noctalia/config.toml:

[[control_center.shortcuts]]
type = "goldesquemoon/internal-keyboard:toggle"

A highlighted tile means the keyboard is disabled. Left click toggles it, right click re-reads the backend state. The optional keyboard bar widget shows the same state and toggles it from the bar. Every toggle raises the usual Noctalia OSD popup - keyboard glyph plus the new state, muted while the keyboard is off - which the Show OSD popup setting can turn off.

No key is bound for you. To add one, bind this command in your compositor config:

noctalia msg plugin goldesquemoon/internal-keyboard:service all toggle

// niri
Mod+Shift+K { spawn-sh "noctalia msg plugin goldesquemoon/internal-keyboard:service all toggle"; }

# Hyprland
bind = SUPER SHIFT, K, exec, noctalia msg plugin goldesquemoon/internal-keyboard:service all toggle

# Sway
bindsym $mod+Shift+k exec noctalia msg plugin goldesquemoon/internal-keyboard:service all toggle

From a terminal or TTY:

internal-keyboard status              # state=on|off, device=..., available=0|1, nodes=...
internal-keyboard devices             # keyboards that can be switched, * marks the current one
sudo internal-keyboard off
sudo internal-keyboard on
sudo internal-keyboard toggle
sudo internal-keyboard select NAME    # also what the Keyboard setting does

status and devices are read-only and need no privileges. The four state-changing subcommands need root; the backend never elevates itself, the sudoers entry that setup.sh installs only makes that sudo call work without a password prompt. Toggling from a TTY is the way back when the internal keyboard is the one that got disabled:

# on a text console, after Ctrl+Alt+F2 and logging in
sudo internal-keyboard on

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
device	string	empty	Keyboard to switch, by exact name (internal-keyboard devices lists them). Empty keeps the keyboard selected by setup.sh.
show_osd	bool	true	Show the OSD popup on every switch.
poll_interval	int	2000	How often the tile and widget re-read the state, in milliseconds (minimum 500).
backend	string	/usr/local/bin/internal-keyboard	Path of the backend CLI, kept under the advanced toggle. Change it only if you installed it elsewhere.

Manifest settings only accept static dropdown options - there is no way to fill one from the devices found at runtime - so the keyboard is named here instead of picked from a dropdown.

IPC

noctalia msg plugin goldesquemoon/internal-keyboard:service all toggle
noctalia msg plugin goldesquemoon/internal-keyboard:service all on
noctalia msg plugin goldesquemoon/internal-keyboard:service all off
noctalia msg plugin goldesquemoon/internal-keyboard:service all refresh

Notes

• How the switch works. A disabled keyboard is recorded as /run/internal-keyboard/disabled. The backend then re-announces the device to udev (synthetic remove plus add), the udev rule sets LIBINPUT_IGNORE_DEVICE=1, and libinput's evdev_device_create() drops the device before the compositor ever sees it. A plain udev "change" event would not work: libinput only reads that property when a device appears.
• Boot default is enabled. The flag lives in /run (tmpfs), so it never survives a reboot and the keyboard always comes back.
• The TTY keeps the keyboard. The kernel side (i8042/atkbd) is untouched; only libinput clients ignore the device. That is what makes Ctrl+Alt+F2 plus sudo internal-keyboard on a reliable recovery path.
• Privileges. The sudoers entry is limited to four subcommands of one root-owned script that the user cannot modify. select validates the name against the keyboards the kernel currently exposes before it rewrites the udev rule, so it cannot be used to inject arbitrary rule content. There is no general-purpose passwordless rule. uninstall.sh removes everything setup.sh wrote.
• No network access. The plugin only reads sysfs, /proc/bus/input/devices and the udev database, and runs sudo -n for the backend.
• Plugin API 39 is required for the OSD popup (noctalia.osd).
• Troubleshooting. If a toggle does nothing, the backend prints LIBINPUT_IGNORE_DEVICE=x, expected y on stderr; reload the rules with sudo udevadm control --reload-rules and try again. Every state change is logged as internal-keyboard: state <on|off> ... in ~/.cache/noctalia/noctalia.log, which tells you whether the backend, the service, or the UI is the stale part.