Comfortable Swipe (Ubuntu)

Comfortable, seamless, and fast 3-finger (and 4-finger) touchpad swipe gestures for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and beyond. May work for other Linux distros that support libinput.

Installation

1. Install git, libinput, and g++

   sudo apt-get install git libinput-tools libxdo-dev g++
   

2. Clone this repository

   git clone https://github.com/Hikari9/comfortable-swipe.git --depth 1
   cd comfortable-swipe
   

3. Install

   bash install
   

4. You may delete the downloaded comfortable-swipe folder after installation.

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. Run

   comfortable-swipe start
   

4. Optional: Automatically run on startup

   comfortable-swipe autostart
   

5. Check the status of your application by running

   comfortable-swipe status
   

Configurations

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

gedit $(comfortable-swipe config)

Make sure to run 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+alt+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+alt+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+alt+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+alt+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.

Debugging

You can check your touchpad driver by running

comfortable-swipe debug

This is an alias of libinput debug-events. This logs all gestures you make on your touchpad, along with other input-based events that can be captured by libinput.

A working swipe gesture will show the following:

$ 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.

Uninstall

Download the uninstall script then run bash uninstall

Bug Reports

Search in Issues if the problem has already been solved.

Otherwise, create a new issue to report your bug.

Please include the output of the following:

1. lsb_release -a
2. g++ --version
3. ls -l /dev/input/event*
4. xinput list | grep touchpad -i
5. lsmod | grep hid
6. comfortable-swipe status
7. comfortable-swipe start (if you can run it)
8. comfortable-swipe debug (try swiping if you can see GESTURE_SWIPE_XXX)
9. cat $(comfortable-swipe config)