Alex Carney

Enabling Touchpad Gestures on Linux

Turns out this was rather easy thanks to libinput-gestures

Installation

Using arch linux this process was made nice and simple thanks to the AUR package

$ yaourt -S libinput-gestures

Configuration

libinput-gestures comes with its own configuration file /etc/libinput-gestures.conf that’s well documented and has a straightforward syntax. Below is my current configuration

gesture swipe up            xdotool key ctrl+F9
gesture swipe down          xdotool key alt+space
gesture swipe left          _internal ws_down
gesture swipe right         _internal ws_up

Each gesture works with either 3 or 4 fingers and executes the command on the right when triggered. Each direction is mapped to the following command.

  • up: Sends the key combination ctrl+F9 which in KDE presents all the windows on the current desktop
  • down: Sends the key combination alt+space which I have set KDE to open Plasma Search
  • left: Go to the previous workspace
  • right: Go to the next workspace
#linux