Linux touchpad gestures at MacBook level
Summary
Bill Harding describes the progress of touchpad gestures under Linux and the interplay of libinput, Wayland, desktop and applications. GNOME 40 integrated workspace gestures particularly visibly. Wayland supports gesture events without X11 extensions.
Ideas
- libinput unifies raw events from different touchpads.
- Wayland compositors recognise and dispatch multi-finger gestures.
- Desktops bind gestures to workspaces and window actions.
- Applications can process zoom and navigation gestures themselves.
Insights
- Good input quality comes from a well-matched chain of several projects.
- Gestures need predictable semantics, not just reliable recognition.
- Hardware diversity makes shared standards more important than device-specific tricks.
Recommendations
- Test gestures with several applications and touchpad sizes.
- Change acceleration and gesture assignments separately.
References
Links to the original source and the Web Archive open in a new tab.