15

I have an Apple Wireless Keyboard and a Magic Trackpad, and I was wondering if there is a way to monitor the battery life remaining/percentage like there is in OSX.

Jorge Castro
  • 73,717
Nathan Dyer
  • 2,117

5 Answers5

19

There isn't a GUI for read wireless mouse or keyboard battery data.

You can find useful information on sysfs under /sys/class/power_supply/. For example the Apple Wireless Keyboard is under /sys/class/power_supply/hid-78:CA:39:4E:6F:C7-battery/. In the device directory there is a file named capacity, this is a capacity in percents.

So in summary, for reading Apple Wireless Keyboard battery capacity you should do:

cat /sys/class/power_supply/hid-78:CA:39:4E:6F:C7-battery/capacity

Note that hid-78:CA:39:4E:6F:C7-battery can be different for your device.

Daniele Napolitano
  • 576
9

In newer Ubuntu (starting from 16.04, I guess), check under Settings -> Power

Here's a screenshot for Ubuntu 16.04 .

Yuri Baburov
  • 191
3

According to this article on webupd8, this functionality is planned for Ubuntu 11.10 as part of Ubuntu's new Power Indicator.

Knowledge Cube
  • 14,911
0

if you are using your magic keyboard on Linux (I'm using Ubuntu 20.04), In settings, Select Power Statistics and look for keyboard

Below is the screenshot

Sunrays
  • 11
0

Based on Daniele Napolitano answer I created this simple python script to print the battery percentage of my magic trackpad and my magic keyboard.

Maybe this can be useful to someone.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import sys
import subprocess


def run_command_or_die(command: str) -> str:
    try:
        result = subprocess.check_output(
            command, shell=True, text=True).strip()
        return result
    except subprocess.CalledProcessError as e:
        print(f"Error executing command: {e}")
        sys.exit(1)


names = run_command_or_die('cat /sys/class/power_supply/hid-/model_name')
capacities = run_command_or_die('cat /sys/class/power_supply/hid-/capacity')


sp_names = names.split('\n')
sp_capacities = capacities.split('\n')


if len(sp_capacities) != len(sp_names):
    sys.exit('Names and capacities do not match')


print(f"{sp_names[0]}: {sp_capacities[0]}%")
print(f"{sp_names[1]}: {sp_capacities[1]}%")

Example:

$ python3 ,battery_magic_hid.py
Magic Trackpad de Yohann: 48%
Magic Keyboard de Yohann: 70%
Yohann
  • 1
  • 1