Multi-Touch Trackpad Gestures on Linux

A guide to enable multi-finger gesture support on any Linux distro, be it Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, Fedora or Arch. Supports pinch-to-zoom in Chrome, Firefox & other browsers.

How often have you missed touchpad gestures when you switched to Linux? I come from years of Windows reign and I miss them a lot… or missed. After digging so much into libinput & everything, I was never able to get a single gesture working on my Linux installation… ever.

Fiddling aroud in elementary OS 6 Beta, I found it had something called ‘Touchégg’, which enabled gestures on it. And not just a few, almost all the gestures I needed along with pinch-to-zoom. Immediately rushed to give it a try on Pop!_OS, and voila!!! It worked!

Enabling touchpad gestures on Linux

Go to Jose Exposito’s Github repo for Touchégg.

Scroll down a bit and you’ll see the Installation & Configuration instructions, which will guide you through rest of the process.

• Tip: Restart your PC if gestures do not work right away.

GUI to Configure Touchégg

Use Touché, the desktop application to configure Touchégg, by the same developer, so less compatibility issues (I found none).

Gesture Support for Gnome

To enable multi-touch gestures on Gnome, install GNOME Shell X11Gestures extension from Gnome Extensions.

Credits:
Jose Exposito on Github