Punktfunk streams your desktop to your iPad or Android tablet, and your Apple Pencil or stylus goes back as a real pen. Your drawing apps on Windows or Linux feel pressure and tilt, as they would from a graphics tablet.
Tip pressure, tilt and the direction you lean travel with every sample, and so does hover. Apple Pencil Pro adds barrel roll, and its squeeze works as the barrel button. Android pens bring their eraser end and both buttons.
Pen samples don't queue behind the picture. Each one leaves the moment the tablet reports it, with every in-between point it caught, and a late one is dropped rather than holding up the next. When your Apple Pencil nears the glass, the iPad raises its refresh rate so the Pencil is read at full speed.
Punktfunk streams 10-bit colour where your screen supports it. On an iPad, turn on 4:4:4 and fine coloured lines stay crisp instead of bleeding into their neighbours. The desktop comes over at your tablet's own resolution and refresh rate.
Sketch on the couch or at the kitchen table while your PC does the heavy lifting. Punktfunk is free, open source and self-hosted: no account, no cloud.
Every Apple Pencil sends pressure and tilt, plus hover on iPads that support it. Squeeze and barrel roll need Apple Pencil Pro and iPadOS 17.5 or newer. A double-tap arrives as the second barrel button on Linux hosts.
The Galaxy S Pen and other active styluses send pressure, tilt, hover, the eraser end and both barrel buttons.
The pen goes through Windows' own pen system, so apps that use Windows Ink see pressure, tilt, rotation, the barrel button and the eraser. Needs Windows 10 1809 or newer. Apps that only speak Wintab don't see it yet.
A virtual tablet called Punktfunk Pen appears for the session. Krita, GIMP and Xournal++ treat it like a graphics tablet, with hover distance and both barrel buttons.
The Mac, Windows and Linux clients don't send pen input yet.