Linux Gestures

• Linux Mouse Gestures
• Ubuntu Gestures
• Ubuntu Mouse Gestures
• Libinput Gestures Linux
• Linux Trackpad Gestures

Linux can also run Windows applications if needed. Characteristics of Linux OS. Linux has several silent features, some of the important ones are: Multiuser Capability: This is a capability of Linux OS where, the same computer resources – hard disk, memory, etc. Are accessible to multiple users. Of course, not on a single terminal, they are. Gestures; Wiki; xdotool list of key codes; Last edited by cunidev Oct 08, 2018. Page history xdotool list of key codes. This is the list of key codes for Xdotool.

I published 'Fusuma' to RubyGems that recognize swipe or pinch gesture on Linux touchpad.
https://github.com/iberianpig/fusuma

You can add touchpad gestures to run commands or common tasks, such as changing workspaces, back or forward on a browser, etc.

This my first post is how to use and customize Fusuma.

1. LIBINPUT-GESTURES 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.
2. Deepin Linux, one the prettiest Linux distros around, also comes with Hot Corners and Gestures that make your Linux desktop experience refreshing. Another striking feature of Deepin is its pleasing.

If you use Debian-based OS (using apt for package management), you can use the following commands like 'apt install' as they are.

I'm using fusuma on elementary OS Loki on Dell XPS 13(9360).

You can use libinput that depends on Fusuma for Ubuntu 15.04 and above, but you should try xswipe to use the Synaptics driver for older versions' Ubuntu.

Confirm installed Ruby version

Please confirm at first whether you have ruby installed. Pixelmator pro 1 3 1.

You can use the fusuma with Ruby it installed in System Wide.

(Of course, even rbenv and rvm is OK)

Install dependent packages

Install libinput-tools for reading touchpad input.

(Fusuma use the output of debug logs by libinput debug-events in itself)

Also install xdotool so that fusuma trigger shortcuts such as Alt + Left, Alt + Right and so on.

Install Fusuma From RubyGems

i is an abbreviation for install. If you want to install the fusuma to Ruby in System-Wide is required sudo.

(If you use the Ruby you have installed via rbenv and rvm, you can install with $ gem install fusuma)

Create configurations file for Fusuma

Create a configurations file to ~/.config/fusuma/config.yml

Open ~/.config/fusuma/config.yml in editor, then paste following content.

The above example is registering the shortcut of the browser by three fingers' swipe.
(Back / Forward / Create Tab / Close Tab)

Add the user to input groups

To execute Fusuma, it needs to give permission to read to the input of touchpad to the user.

gpasswd command adds the user to the input group.
($ USER is the username at runtime)

Need to log out and log in (or restart) from X

Fusuma cannot recognize the touchpad without this process.
Because it must be reflected to add the user in the input group.

Open terminal, and type Fusuma and endter.

It's OK if all actions are worked (Back / Forward / Create Tab / Close Tab) when you swipe with Three-finger on the browser.

Keep running in the background when the terminal is closed

This -d option is running as Unix demon, it disconnects from the terminal process.
So fusuma is available even after closing terminal.

Add recognition gestures and assigns commands to it in ~/.config/fusuma/config.yml.

Confirm command to run in terminal

To switch the workspace, you can set xdotool key ctrl + alt + Up orxdotool key ctrl + alt + Down
I recommend that you try such commands to work properly on the terminal.

Shortcuts for workspace depend on the WindowManager in this example. (Gnome 3 moves up and down with xdotool key ctrl + alt + Up andxdotool key ctrl + alt + Down)

Switch the workspace in the four fingers' swipe

Paste the following at the bottom of the swipe section

If you rewrite the config file, you must do re-run fusuma command after it stops with Ctrl-c or kill command.

If you can confirm the operation of the customized four-finger swipe, it is OK.

Set fusuma to start automatically, because it is troublesome to open the terminal and execute Fusuma command with every restarts your laptop.

1. Batchinpaint 2 0. Enter the which fusuma in the terminal, to note the path to launch Fusuma

2. Start gnome-session-properties, enter the launch path noted the previous step by adding the -d options (daemonize) at the end.

(If you have installed fusuma with Ruby on rbenv or rvm, you can update with $ gem update fusuma)

In ~/.config/fusuma/config.yml, you can set Pinch Zoom (pinch in / pinch out) and Sensitivity for each gesture(threshold).
It is also possible to set gestures that pinch in continuity.

Macclean360 4 5. See Fusuma repository README for more information.

If you find any bug or issue, please register the issue to Github Issue.

Do you want to support Fusuma? Check out the fully optional donation option, a way to support Fusuma's ongoing development directly: https://www.patreon.com/iberianpig

From the libinput wiki page:

libinput is a library to handle input devices in Wayland compositors and to provide a generic X.Org input driver. It provides device detection, device handling, input device event processing and abstraction so minimize the amount of custom input code compositors need to provide the common set of functionality that users expect.

The X.Org input driver supports most regular Xorg#Input devices. Particularly notable is the project's goal to provide advanced support for touch (multitouch and gesture) features of touchpads and touchscreens. See the libinput documentation for more information.

• 2Configuration
• 3Tips and tricks
  • 3.5Gestures
• 4Troubleshooting

Installation

If you wish to use libinput under Wayland, there is nothing to do for installation. The libinput package should already be installed as a dependency of any graphical environment you use that has Wayland, and no additional driver is needed.

If you wish to use libinput with Xorg, install the xf86-input-libinput package, which is 'a thin wrapper around libinput and allows for libinput to be used for input devices in X. This driver can be used as as drop-in replacement for evdev and synaptics.' [1] In other words, other packages used for input with X (i.e., those prefixed with xf86-input-) can be replaced with this driver.

You may also want to install xorg-xinput to be able to change settings at runtime.

Configuration

For Wayland, there is no libinput configuration file. The configurable options depend on the progress of your desktop environment's support for them; see #Graphical tools.

For Xorg, a default configuration file for the wrapper is installed to /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf. No extra configuration is necessary for it to autodetect keyboards, touchpads, trackpointers and supported touchscreens.

Via xinput

First, execute:

It will output the devices on the system and their respective features supported by libinput.

After a restart of the graphical environment, the devices should be managed by libinput with default configuration, if no other drivers are configured to take precedence.

See libinput(4) for general options to set and information about allowable values. The xinput tool is used to view or change options available for a particular device at runtime. For example:

to view all devices and determine their names and numbers. In the following, device is either the name or number identifying the device to operate with.

to view and

to change a setting. option can be either the number or the name of the option. For example, to set both options of libinput Click Method Enabled (303), either of the following can be issued:

or

Via Xorg configuration file

See Xorg#Using .conf files for permanent option settings. Logitech Marble Mouse#libinput and #Button re-mapping illustrate examples.

Alternative drivers for Xorg#Input devices can generally be installed in parallel. If you intend to switch driver for a device to use libinput, ensure no legacy configuration files /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ for other drivers take precedence.

One way to check which devices are managed by libinput is the xorg logfile. For example, the following:

is a notebook without any configuration files in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/, i.e. devices are autodetected.

Of course you can elect to use an alternative driver for one device and libinput for others. A number of factors may influence which driver to use. For example, in comparison to Touchpad Synaptics the libinput driver has fewer options to customize touchpad behaviour to one's own taste, but far more programmatic logic to process multitouch events (e.g. palm detection as well). Hence, it makes sense to try the alternative, if you are experiencing problems on your hardware with one driver or the other.

Custom configuration files should be placed in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ and following a widely used naming schema 30-touchpad.conf is often chosen as filename.

A basic configuration should have the following structure:

You may define as many sections as you like in a single configuration file (usually one per input device).To configure the device of your choice specify a filter by using one of the filters in the INPUTCLASS SECTION xorg.conf(5), e.g.

• MatchIsPointer 'on' (trackpoint)
• MatchIsKeyboard 'on'
• MatchIsTouchpad 'on'
• MatchIsTouchscreen 'on'

The input device can then be configured with any of the lines in the CONFIGURATION DETAILS section of libinput(4). Common options include:

• Option 'Tapping' 'on': tapping a.k.a. tap-to-click
• Option 'ClickMethod' 'clickfinger': trackpad no longer has middle and right button areas and instead two-finger click is a context click and three-finger click is a middle click, see the docs.
• Option 'NaturalScrolling' 'true': natural (reverse) scrolling
• Option 'ScrollMethod' 'edge': edge (vertical) scrolling

Bear in mind that some of them may only apply to certain devices and you will need to restart X for changes to take effect.

Graphical tools

There are different GUI tools:

• GNOME:
  • Control center has a basic UI. See GNOME#Mouse and touchpad.
  • gnome-tweaks offers some additional settings.
• Cinnamon:
  • Similar to the GNOME UI, with more options.
• KDE Plasma 5:
  • Keyboard, mouse and controller devices can be configured from System Settings.
• Xfce:
  • Configured from the Mouse and Touchpad submenu in xfce4-settings.

Tips and tricks

Button re-mapping

Swapping two- and three-finger tap for a touchpad is a straight forward example. Instead of the default three-finger tap for pasting you can configure two-finger tap pasting by setting the TappingButtonMap option in your Xorg configuration file. To set 1/2/3-finger taps to left/right/middle set TappingButtonMap to lrm, for left/middle/right set it to lmr.

Remember to remove MatchIsTouchpad 'on' if your device is not a touchpad and adjust the Identifier accordingly.

Manual button re-mapping

For some devices it is desirable to change the button mapping. A common example is the use of a thumb button instead of the middle button (used in X11 for pasting) on mice where the middle button is part of the mouse wheel. You can query the current button mapping via:

where device is either the device name or the device ID, as returned by xinput list. You can freely permutate the button numbers and write them back. Example:

In this example, we mapped button 6 to be the middle button and disabled the original middle button by assigning it to button 0. This may also be used for Wayland, but be aware both the device number and its button-map will be different. Hence, settings are not directly interchangeable.

Some devices occur several times under the same device name, with a different amount of buttons exposed. The following is an example for reliably changing the button mapping for a Logitech Revolution MX mouse via xinitrc:

Change touchpad sensitivity

The method of finding the correct thresholds for when libinput registers a touch as DOWN and back UP again can be found [2] in the upstream documentation.

Custom touchpad pressure values can be set via temporary local device quirks. See [3].

Disable touchpad

To disable the touchpad, first get its name with xinput list and then disable it with xinput disable name.

• It is more robust to disable it by name than by ID number. The devices may be renumbered.
• It will be necessary to quote the name if it contains spaces.

To make it permanent, see Autostarting.

To toggle, write a script such as [6].

Gestures

While the libinput driver already contains logic to process advanced multitouch events like swipe and pinch gestures, the Desktop environment or Window manager might not have implemented actions for all of them yet.

Linux Mouse Gestures

libinput-gestures

Ubuntu Gestures

For EWMH (see also wm-spec) compliant window managers, the libinput-gestures utility can be used meanwhile. The program reads libinput gestures (through libinput debug-events) from the touchpad and maps them to gestures according to a configuration file. Hence, it offers some flexibility within the boundaries of libinput's built-in recognition.

To use it, install the libinput-gestures^AUR package. You can use the default system-wide configured swipe and pinch gestures or define your own in a personal configuration file, see the README for details.

fusuma

Fusuma is a multitouch gesture recognizer, written in Ruby, which can be used as an alternative to libinput-gestures.

Install the fusumaRuby gem:

Alternatively, there is also ruby-fusuma^AUR.

Ubuntu Mouse Gestures

Other than the fusumaRuby gem gem you have to install the fusuma-plugin-sendkeyRuby gem or one between the xdotool (for X) and ydotool^AUR (for Wayland). Other alternatives are listed here.

Then in ~/.config/fusuma/config.yml you have to set something like:

Or for xdotool:

Same thing for ydotool.

The swipe threshold is important for not swiping back too many pages.

Notice that the config is for three fingers swipe. Two fingers swipe is not supported [7].

Gebaar

Gebaar is another gesture recognizer.Unlike Fusuma, it doesn't support pinching (support is planned in the future though) and threshholds, but in addition to swiping left, right, up and down with 3/4 fingers, it also supports diagonal swipes, which Fusuma does not.

There is a fork of gebaar at Gebaar which could be installed through gebaar-libinput-git^AUR which supports pinch gestures and adds additional features to original gebaar. Take in mind that this version is currently under active development and introduces config changes which makes it incompatable to original Gebaar

GnomeExtendedGestures

For deeper integration with GNOME, there is GnomeExtendedGestures (gnome-shell-extension-extended-gestures-git^AUR). Three finger horizontal and vertical gestures can be configured to perform gnome-shell actions (such as toggling the application overview or cycling between them).

Scroll with mouse by holding a button

There is a nice trick to optimize scrolling with a mouse or trackball by holding a mouse button (like right or middle button, or some other if the mouse has more buttons) and moving the mouse. Very useful in case your mouse does not have the mouse wheel (often the case with the trackballs). To do that one has to set ScrollMethod to button and specify the mouse button in the ScrollButton option for the action. Here is an example for configuration to achieve that:

Troubleshooting

Libinput Gestures Linux

First, see whether executing libinput debug-events can support you in debugging the problem, see libinput-debug-events(1) for options.

Some inputs require kernel support. The tool evemu-describe from the evemu package can be used to check:

Linux Trackpad Gestures

Compare the output of software supported input trackpad driver with a supported trackpad. i.e. a couple of ABS_ axes, a couple of ABS_MT axes and no REL_X/Y axis. For a clickpad the INPUT_PROP_BUTTONPAD property should also be set, if it is supported.

Touchpad not working in GNOME

Ensure the touchpad events are being sent to the GNOME desktop by running the following command:

Additionally, GNOME may override certain behaviors, like turning off Tapping and forcing Natural Scrolling. In this case the settings must be adapted using GNOMEs gsettings command line tool or a graphical frontend of your choice. For example if you wish to enable Tapping and disable Natural Scrolling for your user, adjust the touchpad key-values like the following:

See also

• FOSDEM 2015 - libinput - Hans de Goede on goals and plans of the project
• Peter Hutterer's Blog - numerous posts on libinput from one of the project's hackers