libusb

Welcome

libusb is a C library which gives applications easy access to USB devices on many different operating systems. libusb is an open source project, the code is licensed under the ​GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 or later.

Getting started

There are two versions of the API, the current API libusb-1.0 and its legacy predecessor libusb-0.1.
For all future development please pick libusb-1.0, for a detailed comparison of API versions see the APIs page.

	Download sources	Browse sources	Documentation
1.0	​libusb-1.0.9.tar.bz2	​1.0.x Gitweb	​1.0.x API documention
0.1 (legacy)	​libusb-compat-0.1.4.tar.bz2	​0.1.x Gitweb	​0.1.x API documention

Support

Please read the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page to see if your question has already been answered.

Please ask unanswered questions on the mailing list or in the IRC channel. Remember to search for an answer on your own, before asking others for help.

Bugs and feature requests

If you find a bug in libusb, libusb-compat-0.1, or another related program, or if you wish to request an enhancement, please verify that the bug still exists in the newest code, and then please create a new ticket on this web page.

We require that you register an account and verify your email address before you can create a ticket, in an attempt to reduce the amount of spam that gets into the system. We are sorry for this inconvenience, but registering is quick and simple so please don't let it stop you.

Make sure to view the list of active tickets before creating a new ticket, so that duplicates can be avoided.

Thank you for helping make libusb even better!

Users

Well-known users of libusb include:

• ​CUPS printing software
• ​SANE scanning software
• ​fprint fingerprint reading software
• ​libgphoto2 camera access software (powering Google Picasa, GIMP, DigiKam, Shotwell and others)
• ..

For a more complete list please check the list of software using libusb.

Bindings

libusb can be used from these programming languages:

Language	Details
C(/C++)	Provided by libusb
C#	​libusbdotnet for C#, DotNet and Mono
Common Lisp	​Common Lisp bindings to libusb-0.1
Factor	​Factor libusb-1.0 binding
Go	​Go libusb-1.0 wrapper
Haskell	​Low level, ​high level
Lua	​lua libusb-1.0 binding
node.js	​node.js libusb-1.0 binding
OCaml	​OCaml libusb-1.0 binding
Python	​pyusb for Python
Python	​partial python wrapper using swig
Python	​python-libusb1 pure-python wrapper. Supports asynchronous API, all transfer types, all platforms supported by libusb-1.0 + FreeBSD
Ruby	​libusb for Ruby

Related

• ​usbutils includes the very useful lsusb program to view descriptors in devices

License of the Wiki Content

Creative Commons ​CC BY-SA 3.0