Introduction

Not all drawing talbots support Windows PNP drivers. .And even if they do you have to be aware that there are limitations. On this page I will collect. some basic compatibility testing I've done for some tablets. More here: Windows PNP support for drawing tablets

If the risk is a specific tablet you'd like me to test .then please contact me and let me know. .If I have the tablet I'd be happy to test it.

Testing Windows PNP drivers with pen displays (screen tablets)

I plugged in a couple and their basic functionality worked subject to the limitations described earlier.

Testing setup

• Surface Pro 8

• Windows 11

• Krita

Testing results

Huion

• Huion HS611

  • Position : works

  • Pressure YES

  • Tilt: YES

  • Lower button: detected

  • Upper button: not detected (?)

• Huion Giano G930L with PW517 pen

  • Position : works

  • Pressure YES

  • Tilt: YES

  • Lower button: detected

  • Upper button: not detected

• Huion Kamvas 13 GEN3 (GS1333) with PW600L pen

  • Position: WORKS

  • Pressure: YES

  • Tilt: YES

  • Lower button: detected

  • Upper button: undetected

• Huion Kamvas 16

  • Position: WORKS

  • Pressure: YES

  • Tilt: YES

  • Lower button: detected

  • Upper button: undetected

Wacom

• Wacom One Medium (CTC-6100WL) with CP-923 pen

  • Position: YES

  • Pressure: YES

  • Tilt: YES

  • Lower button: detected

  • Upper button: not detected

• Wacom Intuos Pro (PTH-460, PTH-660, PTH-860) with Pro Pen 2

  • Nothing works

• Wacom Movink 13 (DTH-135) with Pro Pen 2

  • Position: YES

  • Pressure: YES

  • Tilt: YES

  • Lower button: detected

  • Upper button: not detected

XP-Pen

• XP-Pen Deco Pro XLW (MT1592B) with X3 Pro pen

  • Position : works

  • Pressure YES

  • Tilt: YES

  • Lower button: detected

  • Upper button: not detected (?)

Overview

We are now seeing Windows computers running on ARM processors. This holds gives us the possibility for cooler running, high-performance machines with great battery life.

Drawing tablets compatibility with Windows on ARM

You cannot use older tablet drivers with Windows on ARM devices. These require special ARM compatible drivers. Different brands are at different stages of ARM support as described below:

As of 2024/10/03:

• Xencelabs: Has an beta ARM driver available https://www.xencelabs.com/support/download-drivers

• Huion: Actively working on an ARM driver. Not available for download yet.

• Wacom: Actively working on an ARM driver. Not available for download yet. See this link: Does Wacom have a driver for PCs that run Windows 11 on ARM processors (e.g. Snapdragon X)?

• XP-Pen: I asked them and they had no comment on whether they were working on an ARM driver or when one might be expected.

A POSSIBLE alternative: Windows PNP tablet drivers

If you cannot use a tablet until, an ARM driver is available the only other option that may help you is the use of windows PNP tablet drivers.

The windows PNP drivers come with windows and are quite limited. Sometimes they are missing features that you need. I don't recommend using the Windows PNP drivers unless it's a last resort. And keep in mind that not all tablets support windows PNP drivers.

For example Wacom Intos Pro tablets do not support Windows PNP drivers.

More here:

• Windows PNP Drivers

• Testing with Windows PNP drawing tablet drivers

June 2024 update video

Older Windows ARM devices

Microsoft previously released versions of the Surface Pro with using the SQ1 and SQ2 ARM processors. Interestingly, the new Windows improvements for ARM processors seem to be improving performance on these old devices.

See this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/1czcxoc/windows_11_24h2_update_made_my_arm_tablet_faster/

Native ARM applications

Your best performance will be with those apps that are built for ARM.

Go to https://armrepo.ver.lt/ for a list of apps that are available with native ARM support.

Introduction

Microsoft Windows includes built in drivers for many devices. A great example are mice. You plug them in and they just work. This is why these drivers are called “plug-and-play” or P&P drivers.

And windows has PNP drivers for drawing tablets. Sometimes these PNP drivers are very useful. But you should keep in mind that these PNP drivers are missing a lot of features that you really need to have.

Windows PNP drivers are useful in some cases:

• You intend to use the drawing tablet as a mouse replacement. So you're not drawing you're just pointing and selecting and clicking

• You need to troubleshoot problems with the manufacturer's tablet drivers.

• You need to use them as a last resort if you're manufacturers tablet drivers aren't working.

The key things you should know

• Not all tablets work with Windows PNP tablet drivers

• The drivers are extremely limited in what they can do.

• In my opinion they may work better with pen displays than pen tablets that don't have a screen. This is due to some missing features.

Feature support

• pressure sensitivity - PNP drivers do support this.

• tilt sensitivity - PNP drivers support this

Limitations

There are a large set of limitations that come with windows PNP mode compared to manufacturer tablet drivers.

• You cannot control how to map the active area of your tablet to a display in any way
• You cannot control what the buttons on the pen does.

• You cannot control what the buttons on the tablet do.

Forcing Windows to use PNP drivers

• Uninstall your manufacturer's tablet driver

• Restart your computer.

When you computer starts back up it should be using the PNP drivers.

Is your tablet using PNP drivers with your tablet?

The easiest way to see if this how Windows is interacting with your tablet is to look at the system pointer.

Normally your pointer will look like this when you are using the mouse or when you have a tablet driver installed.

(NOTE: It's hard to do a screen capture of this pointer, so I had to rely on a phone camera)

When should you use PNP drivers?

If your manufacturer tablet driver is having problems, the PNP drivers may be a "last resort".

Using PNP mode for testing and diagnosing problems

Interactions between tablet drivers and PNP mode

When you install a tablet driver, basically the tablet driver takes over handling the tablet and windows no longer uses its PNP mode.

And so the PNP mode will not affect you anymore.

Every now and then I have windows use PNP mode even though a driver is installed. Typically this seems to happen when:

• Windows is starting up and the tablet driver hasn't been started yet. For a little bit of time maybe a few seconds maybe 30 seconds you might see the PNP mode cursor. But then the tablet driver will start and it will go back to normal. I might see this happen once or twice a year on my windows machines

• Sometimes when the tablet driver is having problems working with windows then you might see the PNP mode being used.

Which tablets are compatible with Windows PNP?

Notes

Windows supports PNP for lots of devices. For example mice or monitors. PNP is not limited to just tablets.

Windows 11

Get to the Pen and Touch settings

• Open Control Panel

• Type in "pen" and search

• You'll find a section called "Pen and Touch"

• Click on Change tablet pen settings

• The Pen and Touch dialog will launch

OPTION Getting to the Pen and Touch dialog from the command line

If you are comfortable using the command line, you can get to the Pen and Touch dialog directly.

Configure the Press and Hold setting

• Navigate to the Touch tab

• Select Press and Hold

• Click Settings

• The Press and Hold Settings dialog will launch

• Disable Enable press and hold for right-clicking

• Click OK to close the Press and Hold Settings dialog

• Click OK to close the Pen and Touch dialog

If you click on the Flicks icon you’ll see the Flicks settings UI

What Flicks does: When you gesture with the pen, Windows will think you are giving it a command. For example, drawing a short down stroke will cause the following flick Drag Down notification.

Press-and-Hold Ring

When you press down with the pen, you’ll see a “glowing ring” and when you lift the pen a property menu will appear.

What is happening is that Windows is treating you pressing and holding as if you want to do a normal “right click” with the mouse.

Dynamic Feedback Rings

Dynamic feedback (aka Pen Feedback) is all the little rings that appear when you press down with the pen.

Overview

By default modern versions of Photoshop on Windows require the use of Windows Ink. However, you can configure Photoshop to not use Windows Ink and instead fall back to the WINTAB API.

To do this you need to create a file called "PSUserConfig.txt" file. Below you can see the instructions for creating this file.

The PSUserConfig.txt is used in general for lots of different configurations options. For more general information about the PSUsertConfig.txt, see: Enable Optional Extensions for Photoshop

Instructions

STEP 1: Find this folder

[Installation Drive]:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\[Photoshop_version]\[Photoshop_version]Settings\

Mine looks like this

C:\Users\TheSevenPens\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2022\Adobe Photoshop 2022 Settings

STEP 2: With notepad create a file in that folder called PSUserConfig.txt

NOTE: Get the spelling and capitalization of the filename EXACTLY as shown.

So my filename is

C:\Users\TheSevenPens\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2022\Adobe Photoshop 2022 Settings\PSUserConfig.txt

STEP 3: Edit the txt of PSUserConfig.txt with the following two lines

# Use WinTab  
UseSystemStylus 0  

The first line does not matter but the second does.

Make sure the spelling and capitalization are exactly as shown.

Also make sure there aren't any leading or trailing spaces.

Save the file.

STEP 4: Close Photoshop if it is open

STEP 5: Launch Photoshop

Other resources

Reddit posts:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/wacom/comments/yx5yms/i_finally_found_the_fix_for_my_photoshop_input/

• https://www.reddit.com/r/huion/comments/14hk5yr/help_photoshop_wont_detect_pen_pressure_c_huion/

• https://www.reddit.com/r/wacom/comments/sm7e3z/photoshop_2022_slider_delay/

Background

Windows Ink is the evolution of the pen/stylus capabilities that started appearing in Windows in the early 2000s. This was an era when Microsoft was focusing on building products around a Tablet PC concept - what we might call a pen computer today. And as a tablet, it was thought that using a pen with these devices would be critical for tasks such as note taking, marking up documents, electronic signatures, etc.

And this support is extended not only to computers that have a screen that can be used with a pen, but also tablet devices that attach to computers such as pen tablets pen displays.

Adoption

This has been a bit of a rough journey in Windows.

Before Windows Vista

When the first tablet PC features appeared they could easily interfere with drawing tablets.

Windows Vista (2007)

You can see some of how the pen input evolved in this document from Microsoft describing Pen and Touch Input in Windows Vista (archive link). But it was easy to disable those tablet PC features.

Windows 7 (2009)

By the time Windows 7 appeared, the ability to disable Tablet PC features via the Windows user interface started going away. People were forced to edit registry keys.

Windows 8 (2012)

By Windows 8, Windows stopped listening to the registry keys. So the previous workaround to disable these features no longer worked. At the release of Windows 8 it was essentially not possible to correctly use a drawing tablet with Windows.

Eventually tablet drivers started offering a checkbox to disable the use of Windows Ink features and then we could all draw again.

At this point many apps only used WINTAB. So, many people just disabled Windows Ink entirely on their computer. And this was a workable solution for the vast majority of people.

Windows 10 (2015)

As we progressed to Windows 10, several things happened:

• Some apps started to ONLY work with Windows Ink. Microsoft OneNote is a great example.

• Some apps work with BOTH Windows Ink and WINTAB

• Most modern apps handle Windows Ink.

• There are are still some apps that only work with WINTAB.

So these days the best option is to ENABLE Windows Ink in the driver, but disable it for specific apps using the driver's app-specific settings.

The future (updated on 2024)

Writing this in April 2024, we may be looking at more disruptive changes.

Windows on ARM CPUs seems to be coming. I expect this may affect the driver situation:

• It's unclear if older drivers can work with Windows on ARM.

• If that is the case, it is unclear how long a drawing tablet manufacturer will take to have updated drivers

• When they do have updated drivers, they may drop support for older tablets.

When Windows-on-ARM computers start appearing, I'll get one and start experimenting.

Summary

Drawing tablets have excellent compatibility with any Windows computer.

Drivers

Manufacturer tablet drivers versus Windows PNP tablet driver

Even though windows has a built-in PNP driver for drawing tablets, they are very primitive and you should always install the manufacturer-provided tablet drivers. For more about Windows built-in PNP drivers: Windows PNP support for drawing tablets

Only install one tablet driver

I don't recommend installing two different tablet drivers. In my experience they can interfere with each other. For example do not install a Huion driver AND a Wacom driver.

Windows: 32-bit vs 64-bit

If you have a 32-bit Windows computer, you should verify whether the tablet driver works on those systems by contacting their support. Some tablet manufacturers have dropped support in their drivers for those 32-bit Windows systems. This means that you might be forced to use older drivers.

Wacom: https://support.wacom.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500006262281-Does-Wacom-support-Windows-32-bit-Operating-Systems-

Important

"Tablet PC" pen features are the original name for what today is called "Windows Ink"

These instruction were written in 2011 for Windows 7. Most people who used drawing tablets found that the Tablet PC features interfered with their creative applications.

And so, they needed instructions in how to turn it off.

Since Windows 7 the situation has evolved.

Modern tablet drivers use Windows Ink usually have a checkbox to disable Windows Ink. So these instructions should no longer be necessary unless you are using a very old driver.

Overview

• When Windows 7 detects that your PC is connected to a Wacom tablet attached, it automatically activates several Tablet PC features. More here: here Windows 7 Tablet PC features

• These features would be helpful if you were using a Tablet PC, but can be rather annoying or really interfere with your use of creative applications such as Photoshop.

• The following instructions show you how to manually disable these features.

Instructions

Step 1: Install the latest drivers

The Wacom drivers are available here: https://www.wacom.com/en-us/support/product-support/drivers.

Step 2: Disable the Tablet PC Input Panel

Go to Control Panel > Tablet PC Settings

Click on the Other tab

On the Other tab, under Tablet PC Input Panel options, click on Go to Input Panel Settings

Disable all the checkboxes under Choose where to show the Input Panel icons and tab and then click OK.

Step 3: Disable pen flicks

Open the Pen and Touch control panel

Click on the Flicks tab

Uncheck Use flicks to perform common actions quickly and easily

Uncheck Display flicks icon in the notification area

press OK

Step 4: Disable Press-and-Hold

To disable this…

In Control Panel go to Pen and Touch

Under Pen Options, select Press and Hold and click Settings

Uncheck Enable press and hold for right-clicking

Press OK

Step 5: Disable Dynamic Feedback

There’s no UI to disable Dynamic Feedback in Windows 7.

Instead, you have to modify the Windows Registry.

Open notepad and create a new text file with the text below

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\TabletPC] 
"TurnOffPenFeedback"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\TabletPC] 
"TurnOffPenFeedback"=dword:00000001 

Save the file as disable-pen-feedback.reg

Make sure it has the extension .reg and not reg.txt

Right click on disable-pen-feedback.reg and select Merge

Windows will warn you, but just click Run

And Windows will warn you again, just press Yes.

And finally it will tell you that it has merged the settings

Step 6: Optionally, force windows to accept the the changes if needed

Sometimes all these changes will take place immediately. Sometimes it takes a little longer.

There are three options the trigger the change if it’s taking longer than expected:

• Option 1: Log-off and then log back on.

• Option 2: Restart your machine.

• Option 3: (Expert) restart the “Tablet PC Input Service”

The Fix My Pen tool solves annoying Tablet PC when using a Graphics tablet with Windows 7.

Notes

• The FixMyPen tool should no longer be needed thanks to updates to how drivers work with Windows. For years now the solution is to disable Windows Ink.

What Tablet PC features does it disable?

• Dynamic Feedback “Rings”

• Pen Flicks

• Press-and-hold delay

• Tablet PC input panel

Which versions of Windows 7 does it work with?

• Windows 7 Enterprise

• Ultimate

• Home Premium.

Instructions

• Download Fix My Pen from here: https://github.com/saveenr/Fix_My_Pen/releases

• Right-click on the ViziblrFixMyPen.exe file and select Run as administrator.

• When Fix My Pen starts, you will see all the settings are marked “bad”.

• Click Make everything good. Then the program will look like this.

• Close the program.

• Log-out and log back in to Windows .

• Now you can use your Wacom pen without all the Tablet PC nonsense.

Verify that it works

The Flicks icon will no longer be visible in the Notification Area

The Flicks tab in the Pen and Touch control panel will look like this

The Tablet PC Input panel will no longer be visible on the Desktop

The Tablet PC icon will no longer show up next to text input boxes

The Tablet PC Input panel options in Control Panel will have several items disabled and grayed-out:

The Press and Hold value in the control panel will be disabled.

Dynamic Feedback rings will be disabled and you will no longer see them when clicking.

Source Code

It’s all up here: https://github.com/saveenr/Fix_My_Pen/

Global and Application specific configuration

You can configure driver's use Windows Ink:

• For all applications

• For specific applications

This allows you to have a baseline configuration and then modify the behavior for specific applications as needed.

In general for the tablet driver I recommend:

• Enabling Windows Ink for all applications

• Disabling Windows Ink for specific applications that need it.

Every driver has a different way of configuring it in their UI:

• Wacom: Wacom Tablet Properties > Application

• Huion: The drop-down with the gear icon at the top.

• OpenTabletDriver: N/A - OTD does not support per-application Windows Ink configuration

Wacom Driver > Wacom Tablet Properties

• Open the Wacom Tablet Properties app

• Under Tool select your pen

• If you have a pen tablet, go to the Mapping tab.

• Or if you have a pen display, go to the Calibrate tab.

• Set Use Windows Ink to turn on or off Windows Ink in the driver

Wacom Driver > Wacom Center

Huion Driver > Huion Tablet app

• Open the HuionTablet app

• Navigate to Digital Pen

• Under Press Key, set the Enable Windows Ink to turn on or off Windows Ink in the driver

XP-Pen driver > PenTablet App

• Open the PenTablet app

• Navigate to Digital settings

• Set the Windows Ink to turn on or off Windows Ink in the driver

Xencelabs Driver

OpenTabletDriver

NOTE: To see the Windows Ink option, you have to install the OTD Windows Ink plug-in first.

Windows 11

• In Settings

• Go to Pen & Windows Ink

• Under Additional pen settings

• Uncheck Show visual effects

Clip Studio Paint

• Open Clip Studio Paint

• Go to File > Preferences > Tablet

• In the Tablet Input API section, you can choose to enable or disable Windows Ink

  • choose Wintab to enable Windows Ink

  • or choose Tablet PC to disable Windows Ink

• Once you've made the change, restart Clip Studio Paint

Krita

• Open Krita

• Go to Settings > Configure Krita > Tablet settings

• In the Tablet Input API section:

  • Choose Windows 8+ Pointer Input (Windows Ink) to enable Windows Ink

  • or Choose WinTab to disable Windows Ink

• Once you've made your change, restart Krita.

Adobe Photoshop

See these instructions: Configuring Photoshop to NOT use Windows Ink

Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer

• Navigate to Edit > Settings > Tools > Tablet Input Method

• There are three options there:

  • Low Precision (this is the default value)

  • High Precision,

  • Windows Ink

• Restart Affinity Photo/Designer once you change this setting.

ArtRage Vitae

• Navigate to Edit > ArtRage Preferences > Input Device > Tablet Options > Use Wintab checkbox.

• Set the checkbox as you need

  • CHECKED -> enable Windows Ink (it is checked by default)

  • UNCHECKED -> disable Windows Ink

• Restart ArtRage once you change this setting.

Configuring other applications

Many other apps covered here: https://opentabletdriver.net/Wiki/FAQ/WindowsAppSpecific

This list includes

• Photoshop CC

• FireAlpaca

• Paint Tool SAI 2

• MediBantg Paint

• Corel Painter

• Rebelle

• Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer

Overview

Windows Ink is an API and set of features in Microsoft Windows that enable using a pen to work with your PC. More here: . Windows Ink is one of two APIs used for Windows to talk to a tablet. The other, older one, is called WinTab.

Coordinating Windows Ink in the driver and application

Whichever API you want to use, you must configure it in two places (app and driver) the same way.

• To use Windows Ink

  • Enable Windows Ink in the driver

  • Enable Windows Ink in the app

• To use WinTab instead

  • Disable Windows Ink in the driver (this enables WinTab)

  • Disable Windows Ink in the app (choosing WinTab instead)

Instructions:

• How to

• How to

  • NOTE: If you change between Windows Ink and WinTab in app, you should restart the app.

Notes the user experience

Drivers and apps typically present the Windows Ink vs WinTab choice in different ways.

Drivers show it most often as a Windows Ink checkbox. If the box is checked, then Windows Ink is used. If the box is unchecked, then WinTab is used. The driver UI does not show the literal phrase "WinTab" anywhere.

Here's an example from the Wacom Tablet properties app.

Apps usually express it as an API choice and let you can see Windows Ink or WinTab in their UX. Here's an example from Krita.

Another thing Krita demonstrates is that Windows Ink can go by different names.

Here's what it looks like in Clip Studio paint.

Tip: Be aware of Windows Ink configuration

Sometimes applications have trouble working with one of the APIs, so switching to the other API can sometimes solve problems.

Initial Default Configuration

This diagram shows the typical initial configuration for apps and drivers. Usually every app and driver is configured by default to Use Windows Ink.

Recommended configuration

As of 2023 enough applications on Windows support Windows Ink (or require it) that I suggest this configuration:

• In the tablet driver:

  • Enable Windows Ink for all apps

  • Disable Windows Ink for and specific apps where you want to use the WinTab API

• In the applications

  • Ensure they are configured to use the appropriate API as specified in the tablet driver

Application support for Windows Ink

In the years since Windows Ink has been available, here's how apps have adopted it.

• The vast majority of apps support using either Windows Ink or WinTab

  • Almost all of these apps, by default use Windows Ink

  • For almost all apps, switching to WinTab is easy.

  • For some apps though switching to WinTab is complicated. For example, for Adobe deliberately makes it complicated to switch to WinTab.

• Some apps ONLY support Windows Ink. For example: Microsoft OneNote.

• Some apps ONLY support WinTab. These tend to be older apps that have not been updates.

Getting to Windows Ink Control Panel from the command line

Use this in CMD shell