Libinput-gestures is
a utility which reads libinput gestures from your touchpad and maps them
to gestures you configure in a configuration file. Each gesture can be
configured to activate a shell command which is typically an
xdotool command to
action desktop/window/application keyboard combinations and commands.
See the examples in the provided libinput-gestures.conf file. My
motivation for creating this is to use triple swipe up/down to switch
GNOME workspaces, and triple swipe left/right to go backwards/forwards
in my browser, as per the default configuration.
This small and simple utility is only intended to be used temporarily until GNOME and other DE's action libinput gestures natively. It parses the output of the libinput-list-devices and libinput-debug-events utilties so is a little fragile to any version changes in their output format.
This utility is developed and tested on Arch linux with the GNOME 3 DE on Xorg. I am not sure how well this will work on other distros and other DE's etc.
The latest version and documentation is available at http://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures.
IMPORTANT: You must be a member of the input group to have permission to read the touchpad device:
sudo gpasswd -a $USER input # Log out and back in to assign this group
NOTE: Arch users can just install libinput-gestures from the AUR. Then skip to the next CONFIGURATION section.
You need libinput release 1.0 or later. Install prerequisites:
# On Arch:
sudo pacman -S xdotool
# Or, on Debian based systems, e.g. Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install xdotool
Debian and Ubuntu users also need to install libinput-tools if that
package exists in your release:
sudo apt-get install libinput-tools
Install this software:
git clone http://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures
cd libinput-gestures
sudo make install
The default gestures are in /etc/libinput-gestures.conf.
Or copy that file and configure your own gestures in
~/.config/libinput-gestures.conf. The available gestures are:
- swipe up (e.g. map to GNOME move to prev workspace)
- swipe down (e.g map to GNOME move to next workspace)
- swipe left (e.g. map to GNOME/Browser go back)
- swipe right (e.g. map to GNOME/Browser go forward)
- pinch in (e.g. map to GNOME open/close overview)
- pinch out (e.g. map to GNOME open/close overview)
You can choose to specify a specific finger count, typically 3 or 4 fingers. If specified then the command is executed when exactly that number of fingers is used in the gesture. If not specified then the command is executed when that gesture is executed with any number of fingers. Gestures specified with finger count have priority over the same gesture specified without any finger count.
Of course, 2 finger swipes and taps are already interpreted by GNOME or your DE and apps for scrolling etc.
IMPORTANT: Test the program. Check for reported errors in your custom gestures, missing packages, etc:
# Ensure the program is stopped
libinput-gestures-setup stop
# Test to print out commands that would be executed:
libinput-gestures -d
(<ctrl-c> to stop)
# And/or test to print out commands as they are executed:
libinput-gestures -v
(<ctrl-c> to stop)
Confirm that the correct commands are reported for your 3 finger swipe left/right/up/down gestures, and your 2 or 3 finger pinch in/out gestures. Some touchpads can also support 4 finger gestures.
Search for, and then start, the libinput-gestures app in your DE or you can start it immediately in the background using the command line utility:
libinput-gestures-setup start
You can stop the background app with:
libinput-gestures-setup stop
You can enable the app to start automatically in the background when you log in with:
libinput-gestures-setup autostart
You can disable the app from starting automatically with:
libinput-gestures-setup autostop
You can restart the app or reload the configuration file with:
libinput-gestures-setup restart
You can check the status of the app with:
libinput-gestures-setup status
# cd to source dir, as above
git pull
sudo make install
libinput-gestures-setup restart
libinput-gestures-setup stop
libinput-gestures-setup autostop
sudo libinput-gestures-setup uninstall
Copyright (C) 2015 Mark Blakeney. This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ for more details.