GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 767543
Change the overview gesture to three finger swipe up
Last modified: 2021-07-05 14:38:31 UTC
Three finger swipe up is now the default gesture to activate corresponding desktop features on both OS X and Windows 10.
According to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204895, it's actually a four finger swipe up for overview (mission control) on OS X, though another page mentions that 3 AND 4 finger swipe are available. In my opinion though, this should be customizable through dconf, allowing the user to enable/disable the shortcut and set the gesture type (3-4 finger swipe, pinch, etc.).
In recent macOS versions it's three fingers up by default for overview and three fingers down for a list of windows owned by the current app in focus. It also works with four fingers. You can enable advanced gestures to make it require four fingers where three fingers are used for drag and drop.
I think macOS should not be compared in GNOME, because it has horizontal workspaces, and GNOME has vertical. So, in macOS, vertical swipes are for Mission Control and window spread, and horizontal swipes are for switching workspaces. In GNOME, vertical swipes (4-finger) are already used for workspace switching, and IMHO using vertical swipes for everything will be pretty confusing.
@Patryk good to know - the support page seems to assume advanced gestures then, as it lists three fingers for drag-and-drop by default. @Alexander that's a fair point - though I think the 4 finger gestures are a lot easier and feel a lot more natural than the 3 (or 4) finger pinch that's currently used for showing the overview screen. IMHO, the best option would be to let the user choose what the 3/4 finger vertical swipes should do - switch workspace or show overview/apps. I'm currently experimenting a little on a patch, though I have to admit that I'm not really into Gnome developmment yet, and I still have to find out how the whole gsettings/dconf system works ;)
Created attachment 357192 [details] [review] Quick patch to allow vertical for finger swipe to show overview and apps This is a rough and quick sketch of how I would implement it. Though, there's currently no code to select nor red the preference in the windowManager, I just defaulted to the new option for now.
Created attachment 357204 [details] [review] Finished patch allowing the user to select the vertical touchpad swipe action through dconf Please review my finished patch and comment if there are issues.
Any updates on this patch? Anything I still have to improve?
*** Bug 783119 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Review of attachment 357204 [details] [review]: An option to allow 3 or 4 finger swipes means that applications can use *neither* 3 *nor* 4 finger gestures. We do want apps to be able to use gestures as well, so this is not an option.
(In reply to Florian Müllner from comment #9) > An option to allow 3 or 4 finger swipes means that applications can use > *neither* 3 *nor* 4 finger gestures. For the same reason I'm skeptical about changing the overview gestures. Currently all compositor gestures use four fingers, which leaves three-finger gestures to applications.
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