Ubuntu – How to get Firefox to recognize multitouch gestures on a touch screen

firefoxmulti-touch

Multitouch seems to be working fine on Chromium out of the box, but not on Firefox. On Chromium, dragging a finger up or down the screen scrolls the screen as expected, but on Firefox, that gesture seems to be highlighting text. How can I get Firefox to play nice with multitouch gestures?

I'm running Ubuntu 14.04 on a Lenovo Yoga 2 11" convertible laptop.

Edit: I read the page here which says that touch capability is present but disabled in FF. But enabling them and restarting doesn't seem to have any effect–dragging one's finger across the screen still only selects text.

Best Answer

On Xubuntu 16.04 with Firefox 50, I got it working by enabling e10s and setting the env-var MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1. In detail:

Enable e10s/Multiprocess. If you're running Firefox 57 or higher, it should be enabled already. Otherwise, you may have to disable a bunch of addons, and possibly force enable it.
- Use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/ to check which addons are incompatible with e10s, although simply having only-marked-as-compatible addons is not enough in FF50 to get e10s switched on, you may have to force-enable it anyway (in FF50, only certain whitelisted addons are allowed with e10s by default – later versions will enable e10s as long as all addons are compatible).
- You can check in about:support if Multiprocess is on. If you need to force-enable, just open about:config, right-click and enter a new boolean value with the name browser.tabs.remote.force-enable; then restart FF and check about:support again.
Exit FF, and start it from the command-line with MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 /usr/bin/firefox.

Now you can test https://www.paulirish.com/demo/multi and scroll with one finger.

Source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1091627

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – state of multitouch gestures in 14.04 / Unity

On the latest ubuntu, all the advanced multi-touch only work from the touchscreen, not from the touchpad.

So what is left is:

scroll (two fingers drag up or down),
list of running software (3 fingers double tap)
launcher (4 fingers tap)

all the other advanced multitouch gestures are only available from the screen. I'm still puzzled by that design choice.

Touchégg seems to work with 14.04 (I'm on 14.10, can't confirm/deny) https://code.google.com/p/touchegg/

Ubuntu – Ubuntu 16.04 multitouch gestures

I never succeeded in making it work with touchegg. But there is an easy way to achieve it with another tool. Here are the steps: At first download, compile libinput-gestures and install from git repository:

git clone http://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures
cd libinput-gestures
sudo make install

Make sure libinput-tools and xdotool are installed:

sudo apt install libinput-tools xdotool

Make sure current user is in the input group to have permission to read the touchpad device:

sudo gpasswd -a $USER input  # Log out and back in to assign this group

Start libinput-gestures on every start up:

libinput-gestures-setup autostart

Now you can change your virtual workspace by swiping up an down. If you want to make some custom configuration, you should copy the configuration file to your home folder. You can then change it there.

cp /etc/libinput-gestures.conf ~/.config/libinput-gestures.conf
nano ~/.config/libinput-gestures.conf

Have a look at the git repository for further documentation: https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures

Don't forget to logout then login to see the changes taking effect.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – state of multitouch gestures in 14.04 / Unity

Ubuntu – Ubuntu 16.04 multitouch gestures

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