Should Shell use 3 finger gestures rather 4?

[lionirdeadman (Lionir)]

Currently shell uses 4 finger gestures but this is inconvenient for large hands and/or small touchpads and is generally harder to use than 3 finger gestures. So clearly, this is a usability issue.

On the other hand, this means that programs can’t use 3finger gestures anymore which well, means they can only really implement 2 finger scrolling gestures which is what Web does for example but this might not always be a usable option and would require work on the gtk-side from what I understand.

Currently the only app I know using 3 finger gestures is Builder. (will update this list if someone mentions another)

What are your thoughts on the matter?

[alexm (Alexander Mikhaylenko)]

Tobias asked on mastodon about it, got no replies other than one about 3fg tap middle click which is unrelated.

It’s worth noting that both macOS and Windows do have 3-finger swipes reserved for the shell.

this might not always be a usable option and would require work on the gtk-side from what I understand.

It’s usable as long as content doesn’t scroll in the same direction. I.e. you can have pages of vertical lists that are swiped horizontally, but not what Builder is doing atm.

CC @tbernard @chergert

[tbernard (Tobias Bernard)]

As discussed elsewhere, I’d be in favor of reserving 3 finger gestures for the shell.

[alexm (Alexander Mikhaylenko)]

For the past week or so I’ve been using a quick and dirty extension to switch the shell swipe tracker to 3 fingers instead of 4, and I feel very comfortable saying it does work a lot better than 4.

Since nobody replied, I will assume Builder is the only app that does this.