Touchpad edits and Gestures

[ejmg]

This is something I am currently investigating (read: procrastinating from homework) and think others would like:

My touchpad configs remain identical to that within the guide, aka I have not done anything fancy with them. However, as of today, I enabled touchpad "tap" support via KDE's Touchpad settings. This mimics the experience of what I had on macOS where one finger tap is equivalent to a left click, two finger tap is right click, and three finger tap is the mouse middle button (paste).

As of now, one and two finger tap work for me but three does not.

Additionally, I would like to get a 3/4 finger gesture functionality in KDE as well, which would allow me to swipe between my virtual desktops akin to macOS. I have found some preliminary documentation/guides on this issue, such as here, here, and here.

[mmcdole]

I've enabled the following two options for the trackpad by creating the following file:

vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-libinput-custom-config.conf

Section "InputClass"
	Identifier "Touchpad Typing"
	MatchDriver "libinput"
	MatchProduct "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" 
    	Option "DisableWhileTyping" "0"
	Option "Tapping" "1"
EndSection

The option DisableWhileTyping set to false allows me to still use the trackpad while I'm using the keyboard. This was crucial when I was trying to play some games where you move with the WSAD and look with the trackpad.

The option Tapping set to true enables the tap to click behavior you described. I only recently enabled it so I don't know how it will be. Like you, I'm coming from a MacBook but they have amazing palm rejection. Hopefully it won't be too annoying.

I also haven't explored using the synaptic driver. I think I'm still using the generic libinput one, so I don't know how much differently it performs.

Type xinput list-props "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" to see the available props. I've seen some people disable TappingDragging which might be a good idea.