Comfortable Swipe (Debian/Ubuntu)

Comfortable, seamless, and fast 3-finger (and 4-finger) touchpad swipe gestures. Tested in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and beyond, for Unity, GNOME, and KDE desktop environments.

Note

: May work for other Linux distros that support libinput and libxdo (untested).

Installation

1. Update and install essential tools and libraries

   sudo apt update && sudo apt install git g++-7 python3-pip libinput-tools libxdo-dev
   

2. Install comfortable-swipe for your user

   pip3 install --user git+https://github.com/Hikari9/comfortable-swipe
   

3. You can check status with comfortable-swipe status

   $> comfortable-swipe status
   usr/local/share/comfortable-swipe/comfortable-swipe.conf
       threshold = 0.0
           left3 = ctrl+alt+Right
           left4 = ctrl+alt+shift+Right
          right3 = ctrl+alt+Left
          right4 = ctrl+alt+shift+Left
             up3 = ctrl+alt+Down
             up4 = ctrl+alt+shift+Down
           down3 = ctrl+alt+Up
           down4 = ctrl+alt+shift+Up
   autostart is ON
   comfortable-swipe program is STOPPED
   

4. You can list down all commands with comfortable-swipe or comfortable-swipe help

   $> comfortable-swipe
   comfortable-swipe [start|stop|restart|autostart|buffer|help|config|debug|status]
   
   start      - starts 3/4-finger gesture service
   stop       - stops 3/4-finger gesture service
   restart    - stops then starts 3/4-finger gesture service
   autostart  - automatically run on startup (toggleable)
   buffer     - parses output of libinput debug-events
   help       - shows the help dialog
   config     - locates the config file
   debug      - logs raw output from input events taken from libinput
   status     - checks status of program and autostart
   

How to Run

1. You'll need some group permissions to read touchpad input data. Run

   sudo gpasswd -a $USER $(ls -l /dev/input/event* | awk '{print $4}' | head --line=1)
   

2. Important: After inputing your sudo password, log out then log back in

3. By default, comfortable-swipe should be running. Otherwise, run:

   comfortable-swipe start
   

   You can see if gestures work correctly if you see SWIPE xxx in the output:

   $> comfortable-swipe start
   SWIPE left3
   SWIPE right3
   ...
   

How to Upgrade

pip3 install -U --user git+https://github.com/Hikari9/comfortable-swipe

Uninstall

# Uncomment below to COMPLETELY remove configurations (not recommended)
# rm $(comfortable-swipe config)

pip3 uninstall comfortable-swipe

Other Commands

1. comfortable-swipe config - outputs location of configuration file

   $> comfortable-swipe config
   /usr/local/share/comfortable-swipe/comfortable-swipe.conf
   

2. comfortable-swipe autostart - Toggles autostart

   $> comfortable-swipe autostart
   Autostart switched off
   

3. comfortable-swipe debug - Debugs input (this is an unbuffered alias of libinput debug-events)

   $> comfortable-swipe debug
   ...
   -event9   DEVICE_ADDED     TouchPad                     seat0 default group7  cap:pg  size 70x50mm tap(dl off) left scroll-nat scroll-2fg-edge click-buttonareas-clickfinger dwt-on
   ...
   event9   GESTURE_SWIPE_BEGIN  +2.03s   3
   event9   GESTURE_SWIPE_UPDATE  +2.03s  3 -9.95/ 2.64 (-26.90/ 7.12 unaccelerated)
   event9   GESTURE_SWIPE_UPDATE  +2.03s  3 -10.44/ 3.19 (-28.22/ 8.62 unaccelerated)
   event9   GESTURE_SWIPE_UPDATE  +2.04s  3 -9.71/ 2.64 (-26.25/ 7.12 unaccelerated)
   event9   GESTURE_SWIPE_UPDATE  +2.05s  3 -8.98/ 2.64 (-24.28/ 7.12 unaccelerated)
   event9   GESTURE_SWIPE_UPDATE  +2.06s  3 -7.40/ 2.36 (-20.01/ 6.37 unaccelerated)
   event9   GESTURE_SWIPE_UPDATE  +2.06s  3 -6.31/ 2.50 (-17.06/ 6.75 unaccelerated)
   event9   GESTURE_SWIPE_UPDATE  +2.07s  3 -5.34/ 1.80 (-14.44/ 4.87 unaccelerated)
   event9   GESTURE_SWIPE_UPDATE  +2.08s  3 -4.61/ 2.08 (-12.47/ 5.62 unaccelerated)
   event9   GESTURE_SWIPE_UPDATE  +2.09s  3 -4.49/ 1.53 (-12.14/ 4.12 unaccelerated)
   event9   GESTURE_SWIPE_UPDATE  +2.09s  3 -4.01/ 1.25 (-10.83/ 3.37 unaccelerated)
   event9   GESTURE_SWIPE_UPDATE  +2.10s  3 -4.13/ 0.42 (-11.15/ 1.12 unaccelerated)
   event9   GESTURE_SWIPE_END  +2.11s     3
   ...
   

   If you can see GESTURE_SWIPE_XXX in your output, that means your touchpad supports multi-touch swipe gestures.

Configurations

Comfortable swipe makes use of keyboard shortcuts for configurations. Edit by running

gedit $(comfortable-swipe config)

Make sure to restart after making changes:

comfortable-swipe restart

Property	Description	Default Value	Default Behavior
threshold	mouse pixels to activate swipe; higher = less sensitive; floating-point (Note: Sky is the limit! Can be as large as 1000.0)	0.0
left3	3-finger swipe left	ctrl+shift+Right	switch to right workspace
left4	4-finger swipe left	ctrl+alt+shift+Right	move window to right workspace
right3	3-finger swipe right	ctrl+shift+Left	switch to left workspace
right4	4-finger swipe right	ctrl+alt+shift+Left	move window to left workspace
up3	3-finger swipe up	ctrl+shift+Down	switch to bottom workspace
up4	4-finger swipe up	ctrl+alt+shift+Down	move window to bottom workspace
down3	3-finger swipe down	ctrl+shift+Down	switch to above workspace
down4	4-finger swipe down	ctrl+alt+shift+Up	move window to above workpace

Taken from man xdotool:

Type a given keystroke. Examples being "alt+r", "Control_L+J", "ctrl+alt+n", "BackSpace".

Generally, any valid X Keysym string will work. Multiple keys are separated by '+'. Aliases exist for "alt", "ctrl", "shift", "super", and "meta" which all map to Foo_L, such as Alt_L and Control_L, etc.

In cases where your keyboard doesn't actually have the key you want to type, xdotool will automatically find an unused keycode and use that to type the key.

Refer to https://www.linux.org/threads/xdotool-keyboard.10528/ for a complete list of keycodes you can use.

Bug Reports

Create an issue here to report a bug.