How do I test multi-gesture capabilities of a touchpad?

Question

I bought new laptop and I was told that my touch pad is 'Multi Gesture Touchpad'. I'd like to zoom, scroll with two fingers and perform three finger operations.

How do I test the multi gesture capabilities of my touchpad?

Answer 1

You can enable two-finger scrolling by forcing the scrolling setting:

gconftool-2 --set --type=int /desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/scroll_method 2

If this doesn't work, try with the below script:

xinput --set-prop --type=int --format=32 "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Synaptics Two-Finger Pressure" 10

#   Below width 1 finger touch, above width simulate 2 finger touch. - value=pad-pixels
xinput --set-prop --type=int --format=32 "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Synaptics Two-Finger Width" 7        

#   vertical scrolling, horizontal scrolling - values: 0=disable 1=enable
xinput --set-prop --type=int --format=8  "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Synaptics Two-Finger Scrolling" 1 1   

#   vertical, horizontal, corner - values: 0=disable  1=enable
xinput --set-prop --type=int --format=8  "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Synaptics Edge Scrolling" 0 0 0       

#   stabilize 2 finger actions - value=pad-pixels
xinput --set-prop --type=int --format=32 "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Synaptics Jumpy Cursor Threshold" 120 

I have added it to my startup applications. If it doesn't seem to work, try adding a sleep 10 at the top of the script.

Answer 2

You can enable tapping and two finger scrolling at System -> Preferences -> Mouse -> Touchpad.

After that, you should be able to

• scroll with two fingers
• left click by tapping with one finger
• right click by tapping with two fingers
• middle click by tapping with three fingers

For zooming and other features you might have a look at utouch.

Answer 3

There is no guarantee that your touchpad will be one of the supported ones in the new utouch project. But you can test it out by installing the utouch package:

sudo apt-get install utouch

I'd also recommend looking at the wiki page for all the details about utouch: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Multitouch