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.

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.

"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

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

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.

Nice. You just got them a sale from me. I have a crap ton of cables so this will come in handy.

Would this tell me if a cable is close to the end of it's life? I like to travel light and I've had cables (mostly phone/pad power) go out on trips after working as expected when I packed.

If you can afford it, I'd honestly throw these out. "Charging only" is not a spec-compliant thing in USB-C, and personally I wouldn't want to re-discover which devices do and don't support them every time I just want to quickly grab a cable.

What's less easy to replace are all these damn USB-C devices lacking the UFP-identifying circuitry that only work on USB-A chargers using A-to-C cables...