A fast AT-SPI protocol implementation written in pure Rust!
Rust
60
1,691 commits
updated Jul 27, 2026
README
AT-SPI for Rust
Higher level, asynchronous, pure Rust AT-SPI2 protocol implementation using zbus.
Part of the Odilia screen reader project.
Design
- Fully documented, with
#[deny(missing_docs)] - Or at least, it will be by 1.0
- Fully safe, with
#[deny(unsafe_code)] - Fantastic code style with
#[deny(clippy:all, clippy::pedantic, clippy::cargo)]
This crate makes use of the zbus crate for dbus communication. We use the asynchronous zbus API, so to use atspi, you will need to run an async executer like tokio or smol.
Feature Flags
| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
proxies | Yes | Re-exports the atspi-proxies crate, letting you actively communicate with (query) D-Bus. |
connection | Yes | Re-exports the atspi-connection crate, providing convenient abstractions over D-Bus for receiving. Note that active queries still require proxies. |
p2p | Yes | Extends AccessibilityConnection with peer-to-peer capabilities: direct, per-application connections that bypass the bus for queries. Events remain bus broadcasts. |
wrappers | Yes | Enables the event wrapper enums (e.g. Event, ObjectEvents) and the conversions between the generic Event type and the user-facing event structs. |
tokio | No | Enables support for the tokio runtime. Rather than starting its own runtime, zbus spawns its task on the host runtime. |
tracing | No | Enables support for the tracing logger. |
x11-legacy | No | Enables the deprecated X11-era interfaces DeviceEventController and DeviceEventListener. |
Note:
atspiis not compatible with theglommioruntime, as it uses its own types unrelated to how other runtimes work. (PRs welcome!)
D-Bus type validation
Atspi is used to send and receive data to and from applications. Sender and recipient need to agree on the shape of the data type for fruitful communication. Our best bet is to keep our types in sync with the protocol descriptions.
We employ zbus-lockstep to match types against those defined in the AT-SPI2 protocol descriptions.
Not all types can be validated (easily) with zbus_lockstep because types may not exist in the protocol descriptions, for example because they are deprecated (but still in use) or we have chosen a different representation.
A (partial) review of type validation may be found here
Contributing
This repository offers contributors hooks and a commit message template. We kindly request contributors to set both up locally.
git hooks
This repository offers basic pre-commit and pre-push scripts in the .githooks directory.
This command will configure git to use the hooks from the .githooks directory for this repository.
git config core.hooksPath .githooks
git commit message template
The git commit message template helps contributors follow conventional commits for atspi.
This command will configure git to use the commit message template from the .gitmessage file for
this repository.
git config commit.template .gitmessage
License
The atspi library is licensed as Apache 2.0 or MIT.
Contributors
Similar repos
Languages
Rust
98.9%
A fast AT-SPI protocol implementation written in pure Rust!
Rust
60
1,691 commits
updated Jul 27, 2026
README
AT-SPI for Rust
Higher level, asynchronous, pure Rust AT-SPI2 protocol implementation using zbus.
Part of the Odilia screen reader project.
Design
- Fully documented, with
#[deny(missing_docs)] - Or at least, it will be by 1.0
- Fully safe, with
#[deny(unsafe_code)] - Fantastic code style with
#[deny(clippy:all, clippy::pedantic, clippy::cargo)]
This crate makes use of the zbus crate for dbus communication. We use the asynchronous zbus API, so to use atspi, you will need to run an async executer like tokio or smol.
Feature Flags
| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
proxies | Yes | Re-exports the atspi-proxies crate, letting you actively communicate with (query) D-Bus. |
connection | Yes | Re-exports the atspi-connection crate, providing convenient abstractions over D-Bus for receiving. Note that active queries still require proxies. |
p2p | Yes | Extends AccessibilityConnection with peer-to-peer capabilities: direct, per-application connections that bypass the bus for queries. Events remain bus broadcasts. |
wrappers | Yes | Enables the event wrapper enums (e.g. Event, ObjectEvents) and the conversions between the generic Event type and the user-facing event structs. |
tokio | No | Enables support for the tokio runtime. Rather than starting its own runtime, zbus spawns its task on the host runtime. |
tracing | No | Enables support for the tracing logger. |
x11-legacy | No | Enables the deprecated X11-era interfaces DeviceEventController and DeviceEventListener. |
Note:
atspiis not compatible with theglommioruntime, as it uses its own types unrelated to how other runtimes work. (PRs welcome!)
D-Bus type validation
Atspi is used to send and receive data to and from applications. Sender and recipient need to agree on the shape of the data type for fruitful communication. Our best bet is to keep our types in sync with the protocol descriptions.
We employ zbus-lockstep to match types against those defined in the AT-SPI2 protocol descriptions.
Not all types can be validated (easily) with zbus_lockstep because types may not exist in the protocol descriptions, for example because they are deprecated (but still in use) or we have chosen a different representation.
A (partial) review of type validation may be found here
Contributing
This repository offers contributors hooks and a commit message template. We kindly request contributors to set both up locally.
git hooks
This repository offers basic pre-commit and pre-push scripts in the .githooks directory.
This command will configure git to use the hooks from the .githooks directory for this repository.
git config core.hooksPath .githooks
git commit message template
The git commit message template helps contributors follow conventional commits for atspi.
This command will configure git to use the commit message template from the .gitmessage file for
this repository.
git config commit.template .gitmessage
License
The atspi library is licensed as Apache 2.0 or MIT.
Similar repos
Contributors
Languages
Rust
98.9%