diff --git a/doc/source/tutorial.rst b/doc/source/tutorial.rst
index 2f4b2a103c783241354ec6c486a7a5f1b9b0b662..c8a62833375ad6a5692b303e2d49498cb1ee590c 100644
--- a/doc/source/tutorial.rst
+++ b/doc/source/tutorial.rst
@@ -107,6 +107,8 @@ example above, the event type isn't needed when converting from string.
 Ok, now that we know how to deal with event codes and types, we can move on
 to actually using those.
 
+.. _opening_a_device:
+
 Opening a device
 ----------------
 
@@ -118,9 +120,11 @@ devices either - you can easily figure that out yourself by looping through
 the file system or using libudev.
 
 The simplest case (and good enough for most applications) is a mere call to
-``open``::
+``open``, optionally followed by a call to ``fcntl`` to switch the file
+descriptor into non-blocking mode::
 
         >>> fd = open("/dev/input/event0", "rb")
+        >>> fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_SETFL, os.O_NONBLOCK)
         >>> device = libevdev.Device(fd)
         >>> print(device.name)
         Lid Switch
@@ -130,7 +134,7 @@ events from it later or even modify the kernel device.
 
 That's it. libevdev doesn't really care how you opened the device, as long
 as ``fileno()`` works on it it'll take it. Now we can move on to actually
-handling the device
+handling the device.
 
 Querying and modifying device capabilities
 ------------------------------------------
@@ -214,6 +218,16 @@ comparisons::
         if btn in device.events():
             print('There is a button event in there')
 
+The above examples all depened on whether ``os.O_NONBLOCK`` was set on the
+file descriptor after the initial ``open`` call:
+
+- ``os.O_NONBLOCK`` is set: :func:`events <libevdev.device.Device.events>`
+  returns immediately when no events are available.
+- ``os.O_NONBLOCK`` is **not** set: :func:`events
+  <libevdev.device.Device.events>` blocks until events become available
+
+See :ref:`opening_a_device` for an example on setting ``os.O_NONBLOCK``.
+
 Creating uinput devices
 -----------------------
 
diff --git a/libevdev/device.py b/libevdev/device.py
index 7f6e326203a8f3d442b6049b3605906afc0c4904..4698580340b30ea9bb7a594407a7c39a7c6e6777 100644
--- a/libevdev/device.py
+++ b/libevdev/device.py
@@ -495,12 +495,15 @@ class Device(object):
         Event processing should look like this::
 
             fd = open("/dev/input/event0", "rb")
+            fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_SETFL, os.O_NONBLOCK)  # optional
             ctx = libevdev.Device(fd)
 
             while True:
                 for e in ctx.events():
                     print(e):
 
+                ... other mainloop code ...
+
         This function detects if the file descriptor is in blocking or
         non-blocking mode and adjusts its behavior accordingly. If the file
         descriptor is in nonblocking mode and no events are available, this