The Bitcoin Hardware Wallet Interface is a Python library and command line tool for interacting with hardware wallets. It provides a standard way for software to work with hardware wallets without needing to implement device specific drivers. Python software can use the provided library (hwilib). Software in other languages can execute the hwi tool.

Caveat emptor: Inclusion of a specific hardware wallet vendor does not imply any endorsement of quality or security.

Python 3 is required. The libraries and udev rules for each device must also be installed. Some libraries will need to be installed

For Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install libusb-1.0-0-dev libudev-dev python3-dev

For Centos:

sudo yum -y install python3-devel libusbx-devel systemd-devel

For macOS:

brew install libusb

git clone https://github.com/bitcoin-core/HWI.git
cd HWI
poetry install # or 'pip3 install .' or 'python3 setup.py install'

This project uses the Poetry dependency manager. HWI and its dependencies can be installed via poetry by executing the following in the root source directory:

poetry install

Pip can also be used to automatically install HWI and its dependencies using the setup.py file (which is usually in sync with pyproject.toml):

pip3 install .

The setup.py file can be used to install HWI and its dependencies so long as setuptools is also installed:

pip3 install -U setuptools
python3 setup.py install

See pyproject.toml for all dependencies. Dependencies under [tool.poetry.dependencies] are user dependencies, and [tool.poetry.dev-dependencies] for development based dependencies. These dependencies will be installed with any of the three above installation methods.

To use, first enumerate all devices and find the one that you want to use with

./hwi.py enumerate

Once the device type and device path are known, issue commands to it like so:

./hwi.py -t <type> -d <path> <command> <command args>

All output will be in JSON form and sent to stdout. Additional information or prompts will be sent to stderr and will not necessarily be in JSON. This additional information is for debugging purposes.

To see a complete list of available commands and global parameters, run ./hwi.py --help. To see options specific to a particular command, pass the --help parameter after the command name; for example:

./hwi.py getdescriptors --help

Documentation for HWI can be found on readthedocs.io.

For documentation on devices supported and how they are supported, please check the device support page

See Using Bitcoin Core with Hardware Wallets.

This project is available under the MIT License, Copyright Andrew Chow.