This text-based UI was developed for rM software version 2.X -- it hasn't been tested or adapted to rM software 3.X!

reMass

TUI (text-based UI) for Unix-like systems which simplifies customizing reMarkable® e-ink tablets (screens & templates) and provides basic PDF & PNG export functionality.

Why yet another rM assistant? - because I needed a quick solution to export my notes & drawings without internet connection (and I wanted to learn more about the tablet). If you're unexperienced at using the command line or are afraid of breaking something, you should likely prefer RCU.

Disclaimer

This is not an official reMarkable® product, and I am not affiliated with reMarkable AS in any way.

This utility is offered without any warranty. It is released in the hope that it might be helpful to others, but I can make no guarantee that it works as intended. There might be bugs, you may lose data, your device may crash, etc.

TUI Demo

After setup, you can run reMass via python -m remass. The following screenshots show its basic functionalities:

Start-up Screen

Main Application Screen

PDF/PNG Export

Template Up-/Download

Template Removal

Customizing Splash Screens

Device Settings

Setup

System Prerequisites & Caveats:

• reMass requires curses and thus, should work on any Unix-like platform. It's been tested, however, only on Linux (Ubuntu 18.04 & 20.04 LTS).
• reMass uses a fork of rmrl to export PDFs. rmrl requires Python 3.7 or later.
  • On Ubuntu 20.04, Python 3.8 is the default version (at the time of writing).
  • On Ubuntu 18.04, Python 3.6 is the default version, thus you have to install a newer version, e.g.
    sudo apt install python3.8 python3.8-venv
• reMass uses pdf2image for PNG export which requires poppler. On most Linux distributions, you just need to:
  sudo apt install poppler-utils
• Limitations: Currently, rmrl doesn't support fine-grained textures for pencils and paintbrushes (all other pen styles render nicely).

Install reMass

• The easiest way is to install reMass directly from github into a virtualenv:

  # Set up & activate a virtual environment (requires python >= 3.7)
  python3 -m venv venv
  source venv/bin/activate
  
  # Update pip & setuptools
  python -m pip install -U pip setuptools
  
  
  # Install reMass
  python -m pip install git+https://github.com/snototter/remass.git
  # or
  python -m pip install https://github.com/snototter/remass/tarball/master
  
  
  # Now use it
  python -m remass

• Optionally, adjust and install the application launcher provided at ./standalone/remass.desktop:

  # Verify .desktop file before installation:
  desktop-file-validate standalone/remass.desktop
  
  # Install for current user only:
  desktop-file-install standalone/remass.desktop --dir ~/.local/share/applications/

First Steps

• Paths: by default, reMass uses $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/remass/ (standard Unix path, refer to the XDG base directory specification for more details) to store its configuration and $XDG_DATA_HOME/remass to store data.
  You can change these paths via command line arguments, see the provided help:

  python -m remass -h

• Configuration: The starting screen offers all connection options. If you adjust these, you can save this configuration to disk (as TOML) to avoid re-configuration upon the next program start.
  Available options:

  [connection]
  # Default hostname/IP
  host = "10.11.99.1"
  
  # If connection to 'host' cannot be established, reMass tries the fallback:
  host_fallback = ""
  
  # If you have set up authentication via your private key, specify
  keyfile = "~/.ssh/my_private_key"
  
  # If keyfile is set, this password will be used to unlock the key. Otherwise,
  # reMass assumes it is the tablet's root password.
  password = "password"
  
  # SSH connection timeout in seconds
  timeout = 1

• Templates: Notebook templates can optionally be used as background when rendering PDFs from notebooks. You have to check first if you are allowed to copy them from your reMarkable device to your computer for personal use. If this is legal in your jurisdiction, you may Download Templates From Tablet within the template section of reMass.
  To get started, you can also try these custom templates.
• Screens: For ease of use, copy your custom splash screens to XDG_DATA_HOME/remass/screens. Refer to the reMarkableWiki on how to make your own.
  To get started, you can also try these custom screens.

Miscellaneous (Linux)

• To change the system-wide default applications to open PDF files/directories, you can use xdg:

  # Show known MIME associations
  cat ~/.config/mimeapps.list 
  
  # Change via xdg-mime, e.g. use 'nemo' as default file browser
  xdg-mime default nemo.desktop inode/directory