Enable three finger gesture to highlight text

Desktop Environments Gnome
1

I’m extremely used to Mac’s three finger gesture to highlight text.
It appears in Linux or gnome/wayland in particular I’ve to double tap and drag. That’s a very tiring move.

I’d like to know if it’s possible to use three finger swipe gesture to highlight text somehow.

I’ve searched in the gnome extensions but none of the gestures extensions even touches this subject. They’re all about moving things with gestures…

2

Ditch Wayland, do yourself that favour.

Then, install fusuma and its plugins.

Then, use this config:

swipe:
  3:
    begin: #begin window drag with 3 fingers.
      command: xdotool mousedown 1
    update:
      command: xdotool mousemove_relative -- $move_x, $move_y
      accel: 12
    end:
      command: xdotool mouseup 1 #end window drag with 3 fingers.
    right:
      command: 'xdotool key alt+Left' # History forward
      accel: 1
    left:
      command: 'xdotool key alt+Right' # History back
      accel: 1
  4:
    left: 
      command: xdotool key super+alt+Right #Switch workspaces
      threshold: 0.25
      interval: 0.25
    right: 
      command: xdotool key super+alt+Left #Switch workspaces
      threshold: 0.25
      interval: 0.25
    up:
      command: 'xdotool key ctrl+space' # Workspace overview
    down:
      command: 'xdotool key Escape' # Workspace overview (close)
interval: 
  swipe: 0.01
threshold:
  swipe: 0.5

Don’t hurt yourselves with wayland.

3

Well the Gnome project is about to drop X11 support. :slightly_frowning_face:
And KDE Plasma is turning into the same direction.

1 Like
4

I’m aware! But what to do without any support for most things?

In the example above, there’s no mouse position dynamic tracking in Wayland.

Half the extensions, packages etc don’t even support Wayland. It’s mostly based on x (either because they require xdotool or any other thing not available or impossible on Wayland)

Is there a solution for this? I mean, I’m all for new and modern and more safe, but is it worth it if it “doesn’t work”?

Not to mention that as soon I switched to x, that horrible scroll in Firefox improved. In Wayland it’s first laggy, then suddenly you’re at the bottom of the page. In x, it scrolls. As it should. 1:1.

In the end I’m using computers to work, be productive and such. Not to battle weird behaviors.

In Wayland you can’t even highlight text properly. In x you do a three finger wipe and that’s it. As it should be. When you are on a touchpad for 8 hours a day, these things are massively annoying.

5

Also just came across this https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-session/-/merge_requests/98

For me, I see this like WordPress’ dilemma over gutenbergs block editor versus tinymce editor
The latter has been working for 15 years and keeps working like a true workhorse. The former is a fancy idea of someone who wanted to get investors into Audrey capital. It seems very similar with Wayland vs x.
X seems to work and major apps support it, can’t get their stuff working on Wayland. I would say having gimp maintainer insist on keeping x going while Wayland isn’t ripe, tells a lot.

This won’t make it anytime soon. And if, then gnome will end up being a “toy” without major important apps supporting it. I hope for the project this won’t happen :crossed_fingers: