How to swap the two and three finger touchpad tap actions on ubuntu

Chris Hoffman
Chris Hoffman
Editor-in-Chief

Chris Hoffman is Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. He’s written about technology for over a decade and was a PCWorld columnist for two years. Chris has written for The New York Times, been interviewed as a technology expert on TV stations like Miami’s NBC 6, and had his work covered by news outlets like the BBC. Since 2011, Chris has written over 2,000 articles that have been read nearly one billion times—and that’s just here at How-To Geek. Read more.

By default, Ubuntu uses a two-finger tap for right-click and a three-finger tap for middle-click on laptop touchpads. You can swap this behavior, but Ubuntu doesn’t provide a graphical utility for configuring it.

Swapping this behavior is simple and only involves running a command or two — however, making your changes persistent requires creating a script and telling GNOME to automatically run it when the system boots or resumes from suspend.

Swap Two Finger & Three Finger Taps

Launch a terminal and run the following command to swap the tap behavior:

synclient TapButton2=2 && synclient TapButton3=3

These synclient commands tell “TapButton2” (two-finger tap) to produce action 2 (middle-click) and “TapButton3” (three-finger tap) to produce action 3 (right-click).

After running these commands, your tap gestures will be reversed. However, this setting isn’t persistent across system restarts or suspend and wake cycles.

Making Your Configuration Persistent

To make this setting persistent, you’ll have to create a special script and tell GNOME to run it. You can’t just add the script to your startup applications or Ubuntu will overwrite the touchpad’s settings when your system from suspend.

To create the script, open a text editor such as Gedit, which you can launch from the Dash.

Add the commands used above to a new text file like so:

synclient TapButton2=2
synclient TapButton3=3

Save the file with the .sh file extension — for example, you could name it touchpad.sh.

After you’ve saved the file, launch a terminal and run the following command to make your new script executable, replacing /home/name/touchpad.sh with the path to your script:

Next, run the following command — replacing /home/name/touchpad.sh with the path to your script — to tell GNOME to run your script whenever an input device is connected (for example, when your system boots or resumes from suspend). This makes your settings persisent:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.input-devices hotplug-command “/home/name/touchpad.sh”

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Chris Hoffman
Chris Hoffman is Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. He’s written about technology for over a decade and was a PCWorld columnist for two years. Chris has written for The New York Times, been interviewed as a technology expert on TV stations like Miami’s NBC 6, and had his work covered by news outlets like the BBC. Since 2011, Chris has written over 2,000 articles that have been read nearly one billion times—and that’s just here at How-To Geek.
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While typing in my Ubuntu laptop, I was often making mistakes by tapping on touch-pad accidentally. The text cursor (aka caret) jumped to another place, and/or app window lost focus. It made me crazy since the built-in ‘disable touchpad while typing‘ option does not function in my HP laptop.

GNOME has the option to disable touchpad while typing, which is enabled out-of-the-box in current Ubuntu releases. Users may access the settings either via ‘/org/gnome/desktop/peripherals/touchpad/’ in Dconf Editor or using Gnome Tweaks tool.

Disable touchpad while typing via Gnome Tweaks Tool

For Synaptics touchpad running on Xorg, like me, this option may not work. And there are two other choices I’m going to show you in this tutorial.

Disable touchpad while typing via Touchpad-Indicator:

A ten years old app, Touchpad-Indicator, has ability to toggle this function for all Ubuntu users.

It’s a free and open-source project developed and maintained by atareao team from Spain. It has option to disable touchpad while typing and set milliseconds to wait after the last key press before enabling touchpad.

It also allows to disable touchpad while mouse is plugged, toggle scrolling options and remap one-, two- and three-finger tap actions.

How to Install Touchpad Indicator in Ubuntu:

The software developer maintains an official PPA contains the software packages for all current Ubuntu releases (Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, 21.04, 21.10) and old releases such as Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 16.04.

1.) Firstly, open terminal from start menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

2.) Next, refresh package cache and install the app:

Once installed, search for and open it from the overview screen and go to Preferences to change its settings.

Uninstall Touchpad-indicator:

To remove the applet, open a terminal window and run command:

Also remove the Ubuntu PPA by running command in terminal:

Single command to disable touchpad while typing:

Touchpad indicator is great, however it’s a little bit heavy for the single function only. Without installing any third-party app, a single command can also do the trick!

The synaptics touchpad driver for Xorg server offers a command line tool “syndaemon” that monitors keyboard activity and disables the touchpad when the keyboard is being used.

Users can simply open terminal and run the command below to test it out:

The command will run the service silently in background. And the parameters are:

• -i 0.8 tells to wait 0.8 second after last key press before re-enabling the touchpad.
• -K makes it ignore Modifier+Key combos, such as Ctrl, Alt, and/or Shift + key combinations.
• -t tells to disable tapping / scrolling only. Mouse movement is still possible while typing.
• -d runs the command as daemon, in background.

Syndaemon works until reboot. If you like this method, you may make it running automatically at start up via following steps:

1.) Firstly, search for and open ‘Startup Applications’ utility from overview screen.
2.) When it opens, click ‘Add’ button and type:

• Name: Disable TouchPad while typing
• Command: syndaemon -i 0.8 -K -t -d
• Comment: optional

And finally click on ‘Add’ button will make it auto-start at login.

NOTE: It has downside in my case in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. When trying to stop syndaemon either via “System Monitor” or using sudo kill -i Process-ID command, it causes touchpad tap to click not working until reboot!

Most Windows and Mac computers support multi-touch gesture. For example, swiping up with three fingers will show you the desktop while swiping down the same way will reveal all the open Applications. Unfortunately, most Linux distros including Ubuntu, don’t support multi-touch gestures right out of the box. Although, two-finger scroll and double-tap works, it lacks the three-finger and four-finger gestures.

Scrolling through a bunch of GitHub repositories led me to libinput-gestures which worked perfectly on my Acer E5-575G laptop. I also found a couple of GUI based gestures app on the Ubuntu Software repository. So let’s see how you install and configure multi-touch gestures on Ubuntu.

Get Multi-Touch Gestures on Ubuntu 18.04

There are multiple multi-touch gesture apps present on GitHub and Ubuntu Software Center. Out of all those, these 2 apps worked flawlessly for me.

1. Extended Gestures

Ubuntu right-out-of the box supports scrolling gestures and double taps. With Extended gestures, you can extend that list to 3-finger and 4-finger swipe. You can download Extended Gestures from the Ubuntu Software Center. Once you have the app installed, launch it and you will be presented with the additional gestures it provides.

The app also lets you modify the swipe sensitivity. In my case, I have kept it to “1”. Since 0 sensitivity would require me to move my fingers through the entire trackpad.

2. libinput-gestures

libinput-gestures is a command-line utility for adding multi-touch gestures on your Ubuntu machine. It functions the same as Extended Gestures but offers far more gestures and granular controls. Before we begin with the installation, we need git and Python 3.0+ as the pre-requisites. Luckily, Ubuntu already comes installed with Python. But we need to make sure the version is 3.0+. So, to check your Python version use the following command.

In case the command gives an error, you don’t have python 3.0 installed. To install that, run the following command.

After you have python and git installed, we can proceed towards installing libinput-gestures. However, libinput-gestures need to read your touchpad device and for that, your user account to be part of the “input” user group. Run the following command to add yourself to the input user group. You can manually replace it with some other id if you want to add libinput-gesture

Here, $USER is an environment variable whose value is your user id. After the command has completed successfully, restart your system for the changes to take effect.

After the restart, we need to install wmctrl and libinput-tools. wmctrl allows a program to interact with a window which is required by libinput-gestures to minimize windows and applications. To install both of them, run the following commands.

After the successful installation of libinput-tools and wmctrl, we can finally proceed to install libinput-gestures. Run the following commands to install the utility.

The git clone command will copy all the files from GitHub and place it under your home directory. Next command installs libinput-gestures from the downloaded directory.

After we have the files in place, we need to start the libinput-gestures application plus configure it to autostart every time. For that, use the following commands in respective order.

Once done, the libinput-gesture will map the three-finger swipe up gesture to go to Desktop and the three-finger swipe down on the desktop to go to the previous app. You can also pinch in and out to reach the app overview menu.

Make sure you perform the pinch-in and pinch-out at the center of the trackpad to get accurate results.

You get few default gestures with the app like the three-finger swipe and pinch-to-zoom. You can also modify or add other gestures like swipe right_up, swipe left_up, etc. To do that, we need to modify the libinput-gestures.conf file. So, run the following command

This command will open the configuration file wherein you can add or modify gesture actions. For example, I have mapped the Ctrl+Tab shortcut to the left-swipe-up gesture. This lets me quickly switch tabs in chrome with just a left-swipe-up on the trackpad.

Closing Word

These gesture apps primarily map keyboard shortcut to a trackpad action. It won’t be as fluid as on macOS or Windows but nonetheless is a good workaround. For more Ubuntu articles, check out our articles on best PDF editor for Ubuntu and best open-source network monitoring tools for Linux.

You can click, double-click, drag, and scroll using only your touchpad, without separate hardware buttons.

Touchpad gestures are covered separately.

Tap to click

You can tap your touchpad to click instead of using a button.

To click, tap on the touchpad.

To double-click, tap twice.

To drag an item, double-tap but don’t lift your finger after the second tap. Drag the item where you want it, then lift your finger to drop.

If your touchpad supports multi-finger taps, right-click by tapping with two fingers at once. Otherwise, you still need to use hardware buttons to right-click. See Simulate a right mouse click for a method of right-clicking without a second mouse button.

If your touchpad supports multi-finger taps, middle-click by tapping with three fingers at once.

When tapping or dragging with multiple fingers, make sure your fingers are spread far enough apart. If your fingers are too close, your computer may think they’re a single finger.

Enable Tap to Click

Open the Activities overview and start typing Mouse & Touchpad .

Click on Mouse & Touchpad to open the panel.

In the Touchpad section, make sure the Touchpad switch is set to on.

The Touchpad section only appears if your system has a touchpad.

Switch the Tap to Click switch to on.

Two finger scroll

You can scroll using your touchpad using two fingers.

When this is selected, tapping and dragging with one finger will work as normal, but if you drag two fingers across any part of the touchpad, it will scroll instead. Move your fingers between the top and bottom of your touchpad to scroll up and down, or move your fingers across the touchpad to scroll sideways. Be careful to space your fingers a bit apart. If your fingers are too close together, they just look like one big finger to your touchpad.

Two-finger scrolling may not work on all touchpads.

Enable Two-finger Scrolling

Open the Activities overview and start typing Mouse & Touchpad .

Click on Mouse & Touchpad to open the panel.

In the Touchpad section, make sure the Touchpad switch is set to on.

Switch the Two-finger Scrolling switch to on.

Natural scrolling

You can drag content as if sliding a physical piece of paper using the touchpad.

Open the Activities overview and start typing Mouse & Touchpad .

Click on Mouse & Touchpad to open the panel.

In the Touchpad section, make sure that the Touchpad switch is set to on.

I am using xubuntu 12.04 beta2 x86_64 on my ASUS K70AD notebook. After installation I've discovered that two-finger tap to touchpad maps no more to MMB click but now to RMB click, while three-finger tap maps to MMB. I've found no way to alter this behavior with GUI-based settings in XFCE.
After some googling around, I've copied /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf and changed it to

with Option "TapButton2" "3" and next added by me.
After some reboots, this proved to have no effect, both with 2-3, 3-2 and 2-2, 3-3 correspondance in options.
The only way worked is using synclient to change its default mapping TapButton2=3, TapButton3=2 to TabButton2=2, TapButton3=3. Anyway, I don't recognize using synclient as a sound measure since its effect is ephemeral and doesn't last after reboot.
So, what I was doing wrong and how should I fix that touchpad bug? Why not having ability to configure taps with GUI tool?

Last edited by lvd (2012-04-21 17:24:47)

#2 2012-04-27 09:57:40

Re: Touchpad two-finger and three-finger tap mapping to MMB and RMB click

I've not yet played with this version of Xubuntu (downloaded, however busy, busy, busy) but I have spent many a 'happy' hour playing with Xorg configurations a mice and touchpads so I might be able to help.  These things do seem to change from one Ubuntu release to the next (lucid was a nightmare), which why I prefer more stable distributions

I agree synclient is not the way to do this but it is a good way to find out what the Xserver thinks is configured (which should be what you observe by tapping but touchpads can be temperamental fellows).  From a console:

is the answer you want.  You won't get that with the configuration file shown in your posting.

I suggest, if you have not done this already, first you move your configuration to one side, restart the Xserver without it and double check with synclient the default setting is not what it should be.  Restarting the Xserver used to be Ctrl-Alt-Bsp but that was considered not user-friendly (seems a lot of users are really that cack-handed) and so it not the default any more.  If in doubt, just reboot.

Next is to find out if your configuration is being used at all.  Put it back in place, restart the Xserver and have a look in the Xserver's log file:

I see that no less than three 'InputClass'es are applied to my touchpad.  Two come from files in /usr/share/X11 while the third, named 'Touchpad' is mine and comes from a flle in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d.

I notice that your configuration files has the same Identifier line as the original, so you won't be able to tell whether it is being used and you didn't change the file name so your configuration file has the same priority as the default and perhaps the Xserver is confused by this.

Try changing the Identified line:

and rename your configuration to give it a higher priority (a larger numeric prefix):

Now restart the Xserver and check the log again.  If your configuration is listed, check the TapButton settings with synclient.  If the tap buttons are the wrong way round still, change your configuration to read:

Zainul Franciscus
Zainul Franciscus
Writer

Apple users have been swiping, pinching, and rotating Mac’s user interfaces to their fingers’ content. In today’s article, we’ll show you how to do groovy things like expanding and reducing windows, and changing desktops using finger gestures.

To accomplish this, we’ll use a piece of software called TouchEgg, which enhances Ubuntu’s multi touch capability by allowing us to configure actions to the finger gestures that TouchEgg supports.

If you’re a Windows user and like the idea of finger-gestures, we also wrote a tutorial on how to enable MacBook-Style finger gestures on Windows.

Setting Up Your Ubuntu Box

We recommend installing TouchEgg on Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick that has all the package dependencies for TouchEgg. Grab the installer from its project home page.

Make sure that you have the uTouch and evdev libraries, because TouchEgg depends on them. These packages should be ready on Maverick, but if you’re missing any of them, use the synaptic package manager to install it on your Linux box.

The Finger Gestures

TouchEgg does not have any user interface at the time of writing this article, but it comes with an easy to configure text file for all the finger gestures goodness that you can use in Linux.

TouchEgg supports up three-fingers pinch, two to five-fingers tap, and two-fingers to four-fingers swipes. Each gesture is defined in a configuration file under ‘/usr/share/touchegg.conf’.

Each configuration consists of three parts, the gesture name, action, and setting.

For example, in this configuration, we are telling Ubuntu to swap our desktop to the left when we do a four-fingers drag up gesture on our trackpad.

In this one, we configure Ubuntu to minimize and maximize windows when we do a three-fingers action.

The first thing we noticed was how natural it feels to play around with the user interface using finger gestures. It feels nice not to push our mouse; instead, we let our fingers dance, and play with the user interface freely.

It does require some learning curve, but as soon as you get the hang of it, you will find how enjoyable it is to use finger gestures to work with Linux.

Further Reading

Different Trackpads require custom configuration, so be sure to read the configuration documentation in TouchEgg’s Wiki. Feel free to share your own experience with TouchEgg with the other fellow readers in the comments section.

Gestures are part and parcel of using our favorite devices these days. Be it a smartphone, tablet or a laptop, swipes, taps and drags are part of the fabric of the various operating systems on offer. In Windows 10, there are a few quick access features you can enable for when you use three fingers on the trackpad. Not all trackpads may be able to do this. For clarity, we’re using a Precision Trackpad on the 2015 Dell XPS 13.

If you didn’t know they were there you could easily miss them. Here’s what you can do and how you can do it.

1. Open Settings and choose “Devices”

2. Choose “Mouse & touchpad” from the left hand pane

Then in the right hand pane scroll all the way to the bottom where you’ll find two boxes relating to three-finger gestures.

3. Choose your preferred settings

Here’s a breakdown of what you can do and what each thing does:

Three-finger tap

• Search with Cortana – When enabled a three-finger tap on the trackpad will bring up Cortana. Perfect if you either can’t use “Hey Cortana” voice activation or if you’re in a situation where you can’t use it, such as a meeting.
• Action Center – Enable this to give quick access to your notifications and quick settings toggles with a single three-finger tap on the trackpad.
• Nothing – Turn both of the above off.

Three-finger swipe

• Switching apps – this is exactly the same as using Alt+Tab on the keyboard and allows you fast switching between apps you currently have open. Which is better is a matter of preference, but some folks will undoubtedly prefer accessing from the trackpad.
• Nothing – Turn swipe actions off.

So, a limited feature set, but still feature adding to Windows 10. If you spend a lot of time using a trackpad either on a laptop or with a desktop PC, these few options could integrate nicely into your workflow.

For more Windows 10 tips be sure to drop by our dedicated page here

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Samsung’s DeX allows you to use your Android phone as a touchpad to navigate Galaxy’s PC desktop. It offers users a rich multi-contextual environment with desktop-like functionality, drag-and-drop menus, plus resizable, multiple windows. With DeX, you can turn your Samsung Galaxy S8, Tab S4, or any other compatible Android smartphone into a desktop computer. It integrates seamlessly with a monitor, keyboard, or mouse.

“Where has this feature been?” you may ask. Well, DeX isn’t a new interface. It’s been around since 2017 and, at one point, was compatible with Linux on a limited basis — the upgrade to Android 10 removed Linux compatibility. But despite the OS drop, Samsung has been improving DeX for regular Android OS users. You no longer have to use the DeX-dock for recent upgrades. You can simply use Galaxy’s USB connect in DeX mode.

Samsung released DeX for PC in August 2019, helping users integrate effortlessly with compatible Mac or Windows PC. With the Galaxy Note 20 or 20 Ultra, you can use DeX wirelessly on Android TV through Miracast.

You can even use your smartphone with the DeX feature as you normally would, gestures and all. The DeX interface responds well to these gestures and even comes with a few extra perks.

Navigating Samsung DeX using multi-touch finger gestures

DeX mode turns your Samsung Galaxy device into a fully-fledged computer, and you can control what happens on the screen with touchpad gestures.

For instance, tapping on your Galaxy works like a PC mouse left click. This selects objects, activates buttons, opens apps, etc. A two-finger tap simulates a right-click, which brings up more menu options.

Swipe across the DeX screen with two or three fingers, and you can scroll objects in any direction. To select or move objects on the screen, touch and hold, or move while holding, to highlight text.

You can also use the 3 finger pinch to zoom in and out of the screen.

Samsung DeX offers a new feature for three and four-finger touchpad gestures. You can change these gestures in the Settings app under Samsung DeX Settings > Mouse/Touchpad > Touchpad Gestures.

DeX’s multi-touch also has features that give you the ability to map out your touches, pinches, and swipes under its Settings.

Three-finger gestures to use with Samsung DeX on PC or TV

The external display connection capabilities of Samsung DeX allow you to experience your smartphone’s multi-tasking capacity on a larger screen, mirroring your apps for simultaneous use. You can use any compatible monitor, computer, or smart TV with a USB C to HDMI cable for a wired connection. Or connect wirelessly via Miracast over Wi-Fi for TV with select Samsung devices.

The improved Galaxy DeX supports swiping with three fingers on the touchpad. On Samsung Galaxy Note 20 and 20 Ultra, you can activate 3-finger gestures under the Quick Panel once you’ve connected DeX.

Swiping up brings up recent pages while swiping down goes to the Home screen. Scroll through apps by swiping left and right with three fingers.

You can execute three-finger pinch or swipe gestures when three fingers are placed on the touchpad, changing the relative angle in a rotation or distance between each other.

What’s the difference between 2 and 3 finger Samsung DeX touchpad gestures?

Touchscreen gestures mimic how a mouse on a PC behaves, and the same is true for Samsung Galaxy’s DeX. This feature allows you to replace the mouse with your Galaxy device as a touchpad, and gestures are replicated up to the single or double taps.

While you can’t survive without the essential single tap gesture, double and triple taps are more defined. Single taps require you to touch the specific app, button, or anywhere on the Galaxy devices touchscreen and release immediately.

A double-tap gesture on DeX, however, requires that you quickly tap twice in the same location. Change the length of time variances for how long two consecutive taps should take under Touchpad Gestures Settings on DeX.

Though not commonly used on the Galaxy platform, double taps on Android make special features responsive.

Some examples of gestures you can double-tap using the DeX touchpad include double-tapping to wake up the screen if it’s off or on a photo in a browser to zoom in and out. The system may interpret slow double-tap gestures as two single taps.

Whether you tap with one, two, or three fingers, all DeX gestures are variants of the mouse pad actions.

Interpreting DeX touchscreen swipe and pinch 3-finger gestures

When you change your finger position or motion, Samsung Galaxy’s DeX interprets this as a gesture until you lift a finger. According to Android developers, a triggered gesture is un-changed by adding the finger count.

For instance, if you put down the third finger when performing a two-finger pinch, the system will not end the two-finger gesture and initiate a three-finger one. DeX decides that the two gestures are identical semantically and will continue the previous gesture unless the user stops.

The three-finger pinch and swipe gestures supported by Samsung’s DeX include:

DeX swipe gestures executed with 3 fingers

You can move objects synchronously in the same direction using swipe gestures with three or more fingers. Swipe gestures on the Galaxy DeX or DeXpad are possible within any x or y coordinate direction and can include complex path tracing.

DeX three-finger pinch gestures

When you move three or more fingers synchronously in the same direction, Samsung DeX interprets this as a pinch gesture. Pinching works to zoom in and out or change the window size. You do this by placing 3 fingers at any relative distance and then bringing them together.

DeX also supports movements where three fingers don’t move evenly in the pinch or un-pinch positions.

You can still use three-finger pinches with one finger remaining in a particular area. DeX may ignore such fingers and interpret the two remaining fingers’ movement as a window scroll.

Conclusion

Depending on where you’ve placed your fingers in DeX, three-finger gestures will either be interpreted as swipes and pinches to resize elements. If your fingers are within a program window, for instance, or placed on an apps window border, it will suggest window movement.

I hope you’re ready for some fancy finger work! Samsung made DeX to improve user experience, and now that it can support three-finger gestures, it has certainly become more convenient.

Multitouch gestures can be used on touchpads and touchscreens for system navigation, as well as in applications.

A number of applications make use of gestures. In Document Viewer , documents can be zoomed and swiped with gestures, and Image Viewer allows you to zoom, rotate and pan.

System-wide gestures

Open the Activities Overview and Applications View

Place three fingers on the touchpad or touchscreen and gesture upwards to open the Activities Overview.

To open the Applications View, place three fingers and gesture upwards again.

Place three fingers on the touchpad or touchscreen and gesture left or right.

Exit from fullscreen

On a touchscreen, drag down from the top edge to exit from the fullscreen mode of any window.

Bring up the on-screen keyboard

On a touchscreen, drag up from the bottom edge to bring up the on-screen keyboard , if the on-screen keyboard is enabled.

Application gestures

Open an item, launch an application, play a song

Select an item and list actions that can be performed

Press and hold for a second or two.

Scroll the area on the screen

Drag: slide a finger touching the surface.

Change the zoom level of a view ( Maps , Photos )

Two-finger pinch or stretch: Touch the surface with two fingers while bringing them closer or further apart.

Two-finger rotate: Touch the surface with two fingers and rotate.

More Information

• Mouse, Touchpad & Touchscreen — Adjust the behavior of pointing devices to meet personal requirements.

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