Bash aliases for the reMarkable tablet

In this article, I introduce two Bash aliases for the reMarkable tablet, the first provides remote access to the tablet, while the second allows you to download your files without reMarkable's cloud service.

If you haven't accessed your reMarkable yet checkout this article explaining how to do it both via USB and wirelessly.

Remote access

The first alias uses the ssh command to gain remote access to the tablet, which, if you have already enabled can be done by adding the following line to your .bash_aliases file:

	alias rmkb='ssh root@IP_address'

where IP_address is the IP address of your reMarkable tablet which you can find by scrolling to the bottom of the page in Settings > Help > Copyrights and Liscences > General Information on your reMarkable tablet.

Once you have accessed your tablet, you should be able to do all things that you usually do on your own laptop or desktop's terminal.

Download files

The second alias makes use of the scp command and will recursively (-r) copy all files (*, the asterisk) from your tablet to your backups folder:

	alias rmcp='scp -r root@IP_address:/home/root/.local/share/remarkable/xochitl/*
		/path/to/backup/directory/'

Just replace /path/to/backup/directory/ with the backups folder on your computer (make sure it exists first!).

Note:

While this command can copy files both to and from a remote server, that does not mean that you can simply transfer files to your tablet to read and annotate. If your documents don't match reMarkable's specific format they will not show up on your tablet, if that is what you are looking for check out the reMarkable Connection Utility (RCU) by Davis Remmel.

Enable these aliases

To save and enable these aliases, open up your .bash_aliases file and type out the commands (on seperate lines), then save and close the file and tell your shell to re-read it with the following command and hit Enter:

	source ~/.bash_aliases

Now whenever you want to access your tablet type rmkb into your terminal and hit Enter, and your will gain access to your tablet. Likewise, if you type rmcp and hit Enter, your files will automatically backup to your computer.

Note:

Whenever you update the software on your tablet it will switch partition, thus changing the last number of your IP address by +/-1. This is mildly annoying but can quickly be resolved by changing the IP address in the commands above and re-sourcing the .bash_aliases file (as in the last command).