This simple tutorial shows how to enable & configure the multi-touch gestures in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.04, Ubuntu 21.10 using touchegg.
For those running Ubuntu on laptop or PC with external touchpad, multi-finger gestures enable users with more actions to control your system.
Since Ubuntu does not offer a utility to configure multi-touch functions, touchegg is a free open-source tool to enable this feature for you. And it supports for both global gestures or gestures for Firefox, Chromium, Google Chrome only.
Touchegg Enables Touchpad Gestures include:
- Swipe up, down, left, and right with 3 fingers and/or 4 fingers.
- Pinch in / out with 2, 3, and/or 4 fingers.
- Tap with 2, 3, 4, and/or 5 fingers.
Actions you can set for touchpad gesture:
- Minimize, Maximize, Restore, Close a window.
- Tile a window.
- Toggle full-screen.
- Switch desktop.
- Show desktop.
- Execute a command.
- Specify a keyboard shortcut, e.g., to open terminal, switch workspace, toggle activities overview.
How to Install Touchegg in Ubuntu via PPA:
The software has an official PPA which so far supports for Ubuntu 20.04, Linux Mint 20, and higher.
1.) Firstly open terminal from system application launcher and run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:touchegg/stable
Type user password, no asterisk feedback, when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
2.) Next run command to install the touchegg service via command:
sudo apt install touchegg
3.) A graphical configuration tool “touche” is also recommended. And you can download the .deb package from the link below:
Then either double-click to install via Software Install, or run command to install the downloaded .deb package:
sudo apt install ~/Downloads/touche_*.deb
Finally restart your system is required to make multi-touch work!
Enable/Configure Multi-Touch Gestures
After restarted your system, launch touche from system app launcher. When it opens, enable one or more finger gestures as you prefer. Then choose an action from the drop-down box.
To simulate a keyboard shortcut, you can type Shift_L, Control_L, Alt_L, Alt_R, Control_L+Alt_L etc in the Modifiers box. For instance, use Super_L to toggle activities overview, plus Page_Down will move to workspace below.
The changes in touche apply immediately. And there’s also Gnome Extension to enable multi-touch gestures on X11. For more, see touchegg on github.