I could use some help getting touch pad gestures working

General system Newbie
1

Greetings fellow humans, human fellas.

It seemed like I figured everything out with touchpad gestures, but I’m having a bit of trouble setting them up using lib-input-gestures and the GTK gestures application. All of the dependencies are installed and I have added my user to the input user group.

Using ydotool, I have created my gestures as seen in the photo below. Ydotool is a fork of xdotool. It has the same command syntax as xdotool but works on both xorg and Wayland.

image

With these configurations, I and experiencing two issues.

  1. Gestures do not start on startup. I have to open the gestures app in order for all of the gestures to start working. Is there a way to add a startup script?
  2. The time it takes for the gestures to register is pretty sluggish. Is it possible to speed this up?

Any help I can get with these issues would be helpful. Honestly, it feels like I’m asking questions here everyday, haha.

Cheers, and happy holidays.

P.S. When using xdotool and ydotool, make sure to not have spaces between multiple keystrokes.

AKA.
ydotool key super+a
Works while

ydotool key super + a
will not work.

Learned that the hard way.

1 Like
2

System specs? Desktop Environment? People can’t help you without that information.

3

Is that necessary? It’s essentially a xdotool qustion and only the four finger gestures seem to not work.

Anyway.

Welcome to fish, the friendly interactive shell
Type `help` for instructions on how to use fish
paul@EndeavourOSLaptop ~> neofetch
                     ./o.                  paul@EndeavourOSLaptop 
                   ./sssso-                ---------------------- 
                 `:osssssss+-              OS: EndeavourOS Linux x86_64 
               `:+sssssssssso/.            Host: 80X4 Lenovo ideapad 320S-14IKB 
             `-/ossssssssssssso/.          Kernel: 5.9.11-zen2-1-zen 
           `-/+sssssssssssssssso+:`        Uptime: 54 secs 
         `-:/+sssssssssssssssssso+/.       Packages: 1393 (pacman) 
       `.://osssssssssssssssssssso++-      Shell: fish 3.1.2 
      .://+ssssssssssssssssssssssso++:     Resolution: 1920x1080 
    .:///ossssssssssssssssssssssssso++:    DE: GNOME 3.38.1 
  `:////ssssssssssssssssssssssssssso+++.   WM: Mutter 
`-////+ssssssssssssssssssssssssssso++++-   WM Theme: Pop-dark 
 `..-+oosssssssssssssssssssssssso+++++/`   Theme: Pop-dark [GTK2/3] 
   ./++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++/:.     Icons: Tela-purple-dark [GTK2/3] 
  `:::::::::::::::::::::::::------``       Terminal: gnome-terminal 
                                           CPU: Intel Pentium 4415U (4) @ 2.300 
                                           GPU: Intel Device 5906 
                                           Memory: 1044MiB / 7823MiB
4

I’m not sure about the sliggishness, but for me I did the following to get it to start automatically on login:

libinput-gestures-setup autostart

Logged out, then back in, then when I do a status command, I get:

❯ libinput-gestures-setup status
libinput-gestures is installed.
libinput-gestures is set to autostart.
libinput-gestures is running.
libinput-gestures is using default configuration.

Hopefully that helps :slight_smile:

2 Likes
5

Yes it is needed. Each DE handles the gestures differently. Some are not setup properly for multi-finger gestures. Also, not all touchpads are created equally. What solution may work with one touchpad will not work with another. Not every touchpad will support 4-finger gestures either.

The above being said, since you use Gnome, you might want to take a look at the gnome-shell-extended-gestures extension. It integrates directly into Gnome shell and it looks like it will do what you are trying to do. You can find it here:

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1253/extended-gestures/

@jsparknz is correct, you need to make sure that libinput-gestures-setup starts when the system boots. You also need to make sure that you are apart of the input group. You can do this by opening a terminal and typing:

sudo gpasswd -a $USER input

You will then need to reboot.

Finally. Neofetch does not give the hardware information needed for proper troubleshooting. I suggest using the command inxi-Fxxxz in the terminal instead. If it is not installed by default, you can install it by typing yay -S inxi in a terminal.

This program will give the manufacturer and model numbers of the hardware in your system.

1 Like
6

It’s all right, the other guy helped fix the issue. Thanks for the information anyway.

7

It’s a basic function of help requests on the forum. You would be surprised how many times problems are solved with the right information.

https://endeavouros.com/docs/forum/how-to-include-systemlogs-in-your-post/

This information is also very helpful:
inxi -Fxxxza --no-host