"This is a Linux-native reimplementation inspired by darrylmorley/whatcable"

https://github.com/nedrichards/whatcable-linux

But (hazard guess) it comes with a headless CLI binary (no GUI libraries needed) so probably could be ported to Linux (easily with an LLM?)

https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable

ChromeOS firmware has a bunch of this built in - it's super cool. https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2026/01/05/chromebooks-iden... and https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1pyojjd/comme... and https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEA... is where I found out about it. A lot of the clever capabilities rely on the firmware that you have. Source - having spent a while a few weeks back getting Codex to poke at this topic on my machine https://github.com/nedrichards/whatcable-linux/blob/main/doc... since framework do reuse parts of the ChromeOS Embedded Controller in their firmware.

There are options on Linux that you can google up (I don't know enough about any of them to endorse them by linking to one in particular).

As I understand it, Windows doesn't expose the necessary low-level hardware information for something like this to be possible.

Check this for more details on Windows (original author's repo) https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable-windows

A quick search found https://github.com/nedrichards/whatcable-linux, haven't tried it myself though

I came here to ask the same thing. I did find a Linux tool with the same name and purpose but that seems to be an entirely different codebase: https://github.com/nedrichards/whatcable-linux

I have a handful of wireless keyboards that just absolutely refuse to negotiate for charging with certain cables at all, so I'm hoping this will help me at least figure out what those keyboards are looking for in terms of cable.