If you want to set-up touchpad gestures on Linux, but don’t know how, you should check out the following app.
![Gestures Gestures](https://lcom.static.linuxfound.org/images/stories/41373/images/stories/touchscreen_3.jpg)
The app is called ‘Gestures’ and is described by its developer as being a “minimal Gtk+ GUI app for libinput-gestures”.
Windows and macOS both come with a variety of useful touchpad gestures pre-configured out of the box, and offer easy-to-access settings for adjusting or changing gesture behaviour to your liking.
- Linux multi-touch gesture recognizer. Contribute to JoseExposito/touchegg development by creating an account on GitHub.
- Multitouch gestures can be used on touchscreens for system navigation, as well as in applications. A number of applications make use of gestures. In Document Viewer, documents can be zoomed and swiped with gestures, and Image Viewer allows you to zoom, rotate and pan.
Alas Ubuntu, like many Linux distributions, is a little lacking in this regard. Only a handful of basic gestures for scrolling and right-click available out of the box on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, for instance.
But by using the “Gestures” app you can quickly effect a set of custom trackpad gestures that are on par with other operating systems, and in some cases, far more useful!
Create Touchpad Gestures on Ubuntu
Touchscreen Gestures for Linux Desktops: Swipe Apps For those amongst us who uses Linux Laptops with Touchscreens: I was looking to use occasional screen swipes/gestures etc., but could not find one to suit my needs. This is a follow-up video to one I made a while ago about using libinput-gestures for multitouch gestures in Linux. That option still works but, since then. Unfortunately, most Linux distros including Ubuntu, don’t support multi-touch gestures right out of the box. Although, two-finger scroll and double-tap works, it lacks the three-finger and four-finger gestures.
Gestures provides an easy-to-use graphical front-end to libinput-gestures, thus saving you the need to craft a bespoke libinput-gestures config file by hand (or browse around to find a pre-prepared one online).
You can quickly enable trackpad gestures on Ubuntu 18.04 and similar Linux distributions, all based on whether you swipe or pinch the touchpad; the direction you move in; and/or the number of fingers you use in the gesture.
For instance, you could create a custom gesture to trigger the GNOME Shell Activities Overlay when you swipe down with two fingers (using xdtool to bind the gesture to a keyboard shortcut).
You might also set up a custom trackpad gesture with a four finger pinch instantly opening the Nautilus file manager, launch Firefox, take a screenshot, or anything else you want.
How to Get Gestures
You can learn more about Gestures over on its Gitlab page, linked below.
There you’ll find a list of dependencies and build instructions for installing the app on your system:
Reading this post from Solus OS? Lucky you, as Gestures is available from the Solus repos.
Related posts:
Gestures on Linux.
Screengrab:
Features
Swipe uses a novel yet simple correlation mechanism to determine directional intent from event coordinates.
- Wide range of devices supported
- Touchscreens - single, double, triple, quad touches supported.
- Touchpad - double, triple, quad touches
- Wayland and X11 compatible
- Easy Installation - download (or git clone) and run.
- No dependency on Python or Ruby
- Supports Config files
Available variants/branches
![Linux gestures tutorial Linux gestures tutorial](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ArBCfhVsTZw/maxresdefault.jpg)
- Branch modular - Swipe/1.06e - Use with
xdotool
oredotool
orydotool
orxte
etc.
Requirements
- libinput-tools
- Your user must be a member of
input
group: - Optional: Enable touchpad events
Setup
- Download
Swipe
to a folder. (Either download the latest release, or clone this repo, or download and extract the Zip file.) - Launch
swipe
. In most casesSwipe
will look for and find everything it needs, otherwise you can use the options and/or a config file.
See your distro's documentation to setup
Swipe
as a Startup Application
- an application that starts when a desktop user logs in.Usage:
- If no config file is specified,
Swipe
would use a default configuration. - If an appropriate
kbd
device cannot be found,Swipe
will ask you to specify a suitable device using the-i
option.
Config
Generate a sample config file with -s option:
Debug option
Run with
-d
option to have debug info onto the terminal:Desktop notifications (example) are also enabled in debug mode - which shows the details of the event intercepted.
Keys and buttons supported:
Swipe supports about
Run
482
keys/buttons - pretty much inline with Linux's input-event-codes.h. Run
swipe -k
to see a full list:Optional: Build
If you prefer to build yourself, you will need the Go Programming Language installed on your System.
Ubuntu Touchpad Gesture
Go into the folder and build as: