Do Wacom Tablets Need Drivers

[Imke]

This appears to be a tech support question about fixing technology to work as advertised. Please edit the question so that it pertains to using technology to solve a design problem. You may want to check if it hasn't already been asked in Super User. In many cases, contacting the manufacturer is the quickest option.

I have recently started teaching (a non-graphic-design-related course) at uni, and was looking at buying a simple tablet to plug into the computer that controls the projector to use as a basic whiteboard as the actual whiteboard is on the other side of the room.

I was looking at the wacom intuos pen small, as i dont need very complicated functionality. My only question is whether it is plug-and-play with windows 7, or do i need to install drivers? I do not have administrator access to the computers at uni, so i am worried that i won't be able to use it.

I know that drivers exist, but i am hoping that they are used for the extended functionality of the tablet such as pressure sensitivity and the like, and that simple mouse-like operations might be possible with plug-and-play.

Windows 7 comes with tablet drivers, yes. It works out of the box, if you dont want to be fancy and work over standard USB*. It does not work for any of the primary uses i use a tablet for, so I never use it, but as a pointer its fine (on a single monitor setup).

Now I have upgraded to MacStudio and I cannot get the tablet to work normally. If I don't have drivers on the system, then basic functions works - including clicks - but not mapping. If I install this driver other things works, but clicking is not working at all (button or pen tap).

I found a patched driver on Github that might help you solve the problem with your tablet! The driver was created by "Thenickdude" and is called "wacom-driver-fix". You might try to install this driver and fix it.

Unless the driver is a 64-bit driver purposely designed and compiled by Wacom for macOS Ventura, or stated to be compatible with Ventura, then you are out of luck and it would be risky to use any reverse-engineered driver code not released by Wacom, or in violation of Wacom's intellectual property patents and licenses.

VikingOSx is right: using a driver not compatible with MacOS Ventura can be risky. However, the patched driver of Thenickdude "wacom-driver-fix" is compatible with MacOS Ventura. This patch fixes bugs that prevent older Wacom tablet drivers from running on MacOS Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey and now MacOS 13 Ventura.

Please note that this is only a general guide and there may be additional steps or settings specific to your system. Also, make sure you have a valid license to use Windows 10 in your virtual machine. To get it you can buy it from the Microsoft website or an authorized reseller. Once you have purchased the license, you will receive a product key that you can use to activate your copy of Windows 10 during installation or later from Windows settings. Make sure you purchase a valid license for the version of Windows 10 that you intend to use in your virtual machine.

After creating and configuring the virtual machine with Windows 10, you can start it by opening the virtualization software you used (virtualbox or VMware Fusion) and selecting the virtual machine from the list of available virtual machines. Then, click the "Start" or "Run" button to start the virtual machine. Once started, you will see the Windows 10 Startup screen and you will be able to log in as you normally would on a computer with Windows 10 installed.

To exit the virtual machine with Windows 10, you can simply shut down Windows 10 as you normally would on a computer with Windows 10 installed. Alternatively, you can also use the virtualization software menu to stop or suspend the virtual machine. Make sure you save all your work before exiting the virtual machine.

You can download the driver for your Wacom Intous 3 XL tablet from the Wacom website at the driver page: -it/support/product-support/drivers. Make sure you select the correct driver version for your operating system and tablet model.

Anyway I am quite certain that there is somehow a possibility for this tablet to work on my mac studio. This patched driver works with M1 macs, it works with Ventura OS, so it might me something specific to my system.

Have you tried contacting the developer of the driver to report the issue to see if the developer will work with you to fix it? The developer may not have the same system so would likely rely on you for testing and fixes.

Hello, I use Gnome3 and have a new Wacom Bamboo Connect CTL-470/k and cannot get anything to work. I've searched archwiki, ubuntu,and gentoo forums, but nothing works, and I've installed the xf86-input-wacom through the AUR.
It shows that it is plugged in through usb:

In system settings, under Wacom Graphics Tablet, it says "No tablet detected please plug in or turn on your Wacom tablet." I know this is a new model and is not supported in the kernel, but I can't even get the patches working that others say work fine. I also multi-boot with ubuntu, debian, fedora, and slack. I've tried it on Ubuntu and have the same issue- haven't tried it on the others yet. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Hello Killgriff. I had a similar problem not too long ago. Basically the CTL 470 is a new Wacom tablet that requires drivers that has not been added to the kernel yet (they are expected to be added in v 3.3). Therefore, you must rely on a patched Wacom module. After a couple of hours searching I found a solution that works combining the Arch Wiki Wacom Article and this Ubuntu forum post

First obtain the xf86-input-wacom-git package from the AUR. This will provide the much needed udev rules and X11 configuration options. Next grab the patch from the third post in this thread (it's an attachment), decompress it, then run

Afterward you should restart. Once you do check to see if theres a wacom symlink in the /dev/input directory, then cat it move your stylus around and see if it works (there should just be a bunch of random characters when you move it around the tablet).

I followed all the steps in this post but it did not work for me at first. First off I am using a Lifebook TH700 touchscreen. I am just trying to set up the tablet for my classroom which has an old compaq. When I followed all the steps my touchscreen stopped working and the tablet still did not work. I started to undo all the steps. First I removed the udev rules (rebooted still didn't work), then I reinstalled the kernel. When I rebooted everything was working great. Tomorrow I need to try on my classroom laptop, but not sure what worked. Any thoughts? I will post how things worked out for me.

I've followed the above article with regards to applying the patched kernel module and added the line for my pen device in the 10-wacom udev file as well but I still don't get any wacom devices listed in /dev/input. Is there anyone else who had this issue and managed to fix it or any further things I could check?

#13. Start X, and it should operate in one of it's modes (tablet or mouse) when you draw on it. It's worth noting here that while the tablet works in KDE, doing a cat /dev/input/tablet-bamboo-pen did nothing from the prompt when using the tablet.

Cool thanks for the update caliburn. My tablet suddenly stopped working once i upgraded to 3.2.x. Anyhow for anyone interested the drivers for this tablet and it's kin will be added in 3.3 supposedly.

I have a Intuos PS CTL-490. I never had any problem with Illustrator, Photoshop or blender before. But, for some reason, illustrator keeps crashing after some minutes if i use the table to draw on it.

I tried some fixes i saw online such as rolling back to old drivers or illustrator versions, but it just didn't help. When i tried an older Illustrator version, i got a crash message, but, with the newest version, i don't even get an error message.

Is anyone else having the same issue? I saw some people complaining about it too. I assume it has something to do with Illustrator itself, since i don't have any issue with Photoshop or Blender. It's very... well... frustrating, to say the least.

Thx for your time. Cheers!

Which Wacom tablet driver are you using? If you're on a Windows-based PC and using the 6.4.1-3 driver (dated 1/24/2023) you should uninstall that and then download/install the older 6.4.0-11 driver (dated 11/21/2022). The 6.4.1-3 driver has serious problems. On my own system, using a Wacom Intuos Pro M, the Illustrator application window will just hang and mysteriously disappear, often within a couple or so minutes after launching the application. Strangely, when I run the driver logging utility to record what happens during a crash event the application won't crash. If the logging utility isn't running the crashes happen again. I simply gave up and reverted back to the November 2022 driver.

I'm wonder if any Mac users have experienced similar crashes. Wacom released a newer driver for OSX 10.5-13 on February 28. Along with having a newer driver, Mac users also have the benefit of being able to use a Wacom tablet without the absolute scourge of Windows Ink messing up the works.

Anyway, if you don't know it already the Wacom drivers location is here:
-us/support/product-support/drivers
Look for the "Older Versions" link under the "Download" button for the current driver.

First, make sure that you have the latest driver installed for your Wacom tablet. You can download the latest driver from the Wacom website. If you already have the latest driver installed, try reinstalling it to see if that helps.

Anyone running Adobe Illustrator or other Adobe applications on a Windows-based PC with a Wacom tablet connected would probably already have Windows Ink disabled regardless if any applications are crashing. Windows Ink is just the absolute worst for how it overrides important pen functions and certain keyboard shortcuts. If Windows Ink is enabled it will ruin any click-drag actions with the pen tip. An animated circle icon thingie pops up in the way, preventing the user to drag any slider icon in the user interface, such as the CMYK sliders in a color palette or a transparency level slider. Click-dragging the pen tip for animated zoom doesn't work either. The dreaded circle icons jumps up again. When clicking into any sort of text entry field a pop-up is liable to jump in the way, wanting you to manually hand-write your text rather than using the physical keyboard on your computer that is a million times faster at text entry. Illustrator and Photoshop (along with most other applications) are utterly not-usable when Windows Ink is enabled in a Wacom tablet's properties. It's pretty much the most utterly stupid graphics related software I've ever seen. I doubt if any of the Microsoft engineers who worked on that garbage have tried using the finished product for any everyday computing tasks. While Wacom continues to rely on Windows Ink for some of the tablet's most basic functions I would have to strongly recommend people only buy a Wacom tablet (or any other graphics tablet) if they're going to connect it to a Mac-based computer. Microsoft has made graphics tablets utterly stink when connected to a PC.

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