Touchegg

Touchegg is a multitouch gesture program, that runs as a user in the background, recognizes gestures, translates them to more conventional types of events and/or performs custom actions in response to them.

Touchegg is not compatible with Wayland.

Installation

Install touchegg^AUR package. Alternatively, it is also available at touchegg-git^AUR. Install touche^AUR if you want a desktop application to configure touchegg.

Configuration

The default configuration can be found in /usr/share/touchegg/touchegg.conf.

To customize it, copy the default configuration to ~/.config/touchegg/touchegg.conf and make your changes.

It is a basic XML file that defines various gestures. Please note that at this time TAP_AND_HOLD, PINCH, and ROTATE, do not appear to work.

The list of triggers can be found here.

The list of actions can be found here.

The two-fingers scrolling emulation has been droped, due to bad user experience, in the recent 2.0 rewrite of touchegg. To restore it, install xdotool, and add the following to the configuration file :

   <gesture type="SWIPE" fingers="2" direction="DOWN">
     <action type="RUN_COMMAND">
       <repeat>true</repeat>
       <command>xdotool click 4</command>
       <decreaseCommand>xdotool click 5</decreaseCommand>
     </action>
   </gesture>
   <gesture type="SWIPE" fingers="2" direction="UP">
     <action type="RUN_COMMAND">
       <repeat>true</repeat>
       <command>xdotool click 5</command>
       <decreaseCommand>xdotool click 4</decreaseCommand>
     </action>
   </gesture>

Note that on Kde, text gets selected while scrolling (see).

Start on login

The daemon is started with systemd : systemctl enable touchegg.service The client can be loaded from the wm.

For gnome

1. Hit alt-f2;
2. Type gnome-session-properties;
3. Hit add;
4. In the box labeled "Command" type touchegg. Fill in "Name" and "Label" as you choose;
5. Hit OK.

Note: gnome-session-properties has been removed from gnome 3.12. Currently, you can install gnome-session-properties^AUR from the AUR. See more details in the BBS thread

Alternatively, you can create a desktop entry in ~/.config/autostart/

~/.config/autostart/touchegg.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Touchegg
StartupWMClass=touchegg
Comment=Gestures for touchpad
GenericName=Gesture Deamon
Exec=/usr/bin/touchegg
Icon=touchegg
Type=Application
Path=/usr/bin

For the startx command

You can modify your .xprofile:

~/.xprofile

touchegg &