Skip to main content

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/PaulStoffregen/XPT2046_Touchscreen/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

The XPT2046_Touchscreen library gives any Arduino-compatible board a clean, high-level interface to resistive touch displays built around the XPT2046 controller chip. With just a few lines of code you can detect touches, read calibrated X/Y coordinates, and measure applied pressure — all over a standard SPI bus.

​
What is the XPT2046?

The XPT2046 is a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter purpose-built for four-wire resistive touchscreens. It handles the analog signal acquisition, conversion, and pressure measurement entirely on-chip, then delivers results over a simple SPI interface. The chip is found on a huge number of low-cost color TFT display modules — if your display has a touch layer and uses the T_CS, T_CLK, T_DIN, T_DO, and T_IRQ pins, it almost certainly has an XPT2046 (or its close sibling the ADS7843) under the hood.

​
What the Library Does

The library manages all SPI communication with the XPT2046 so your sketch never needs to bit-bang registers directly. Key capabilities include:
  • Touch detection — touched() returns true the moment a finger is on the screen, using a built-in pressure threshold of 300 (out of 4095) to filter noise.
  • Coordinate reading — getPoint() returns a TS_Point struct with 12-bit x, y, and z (pressure) fields, each ranging from 0 to 4095.
  • Raw data access — readData(uint16_t *x, uint16_t *y, uint8_t *z) writes the current touch position into caller-supplied pointers. Note that z is uint8_t*, so the pressure value is truncated to the range 0–255 (unlike TS_Point.z from getPoint(), which is int16_t and spans the full 12-bit range).
  • Rotation — setRotation(n) accepts values 0–3 and rotates the coordinate frame to match any display orientation, using the same numbering as Adafruit and ILI9341_t3 TFT libraries.
  • Interrupt pin support — pass a TIRQ_PIN to the constructor and the library attaches a hardware interrupt internally. Subsequent calls to touched() and getPoint() skip the SPI bus entirely when no touch has occurred, keeping your MCU’s SPI lines idle and preventing the Teensy’s LED from flickering on every poll.
  • IRQ-only polling — tirqTouched() returns true if the interrupt flag has been set, without triggering an SPI read. Useful for wakeup scenarios.
  • Buffer status — bufferEmpty() returns true when the last valid sample is older than 3 ms (i.e., no fresh data is buffered). bufferSize() always returns 1, reflecting the library’s single-sample buffer.
  • Alternate SPI ports — begin(SPI1) (or any SPIClass instance) lets you use a non-default hardware SPI peripheral.
  • FlexIO SPI — on Teensy 4.x, begin(FlexIOSPI &wflexspi) is supported when the FlexIOSPI library is present.

​
Adafruit_STMPE610 Compatibility

XPT2046_Touchscreen is a drop-in replacement for Adafruit’s Adafruit_STMPE610 touchscreen library. The function names, parameter types, and numeric ranges are intentionally identical, so any sketch or library written for Adafruit’s resistive-touch API works without modification.

​
Supported Platforms

The library targets all Arduino-compatible architectures (architectures=*). It has been tested extensively on:
PlatformNotes
Arduino Uno / Mega / LeonardoHardware SPI on pins 11 (MOSI), 12 (MISO), 13 (SCK)
Teensy 3.x / 4.xFull support including FlexIO SPI on Teensy 4.x
ESP8266ISR placed in IRAM via ICACHE_RAM_ATTR automatically
ESP32ISR placed in IRAM via IRAM_ATTR automatically
Any Arduino-compatible boardAs long as the Arduino SPI library is available

​
Library Facts

PropertyValue
Version1.4
AuthorPaul Stoffregen
CategoryDisplay
Architectures* (all)
LicenseMIT
Repositorygithub.com/PaulStoffregen/XPT2046_Touchscreen
Arduino IDE minimum1.6.0
The MIT license allows free use, modification, and redistribution in both personal and commercial projects. The copyright notice and permission notice must be retained in all copies or substantial portions of the software.

​
Next Steps

Installation

Install the library via Arduino Library Manager, PlatformIO, or manual ZIP download.

Quickstart

Wire up your display and read your first touch coordinates in under 5 minutes.

Wiring Guide

Pin-by-pin wiring diagrams for Arduino Uno, Teensy, ESP8266, and ESP32.

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Get started for freeTalk to us