this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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MacOS -> Linux: BetterTouchTool replacement (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 days ago by Horsey@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
17 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I'm still trying to get myself over to linux, and I'm having a hard time finding a replacement for BetterTouchTool. Essentially, the app lets you customize multitouch trackpad gestures per-app and system wide with single to 5 finger support.

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[–] telepresence@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

probably off topic, but i never understand people who actually use a trackpad, as i find them horrible to use and carry around a bt mouse w my notebook so i don't have to use the trackpad. if you have the time, could you please explain a bit why you personally use it? Thanks!

[–] Horsey@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The multitouch trackpad for me is a great way to get the eye candy of having linear animations tied to your finger movement. In a practical sense, I use linear animations in MacOS to "peek" between desktops and pages in Safari all the time. The fact of the matter is that linear animations are just far smoother, and useful than ones that snap into place from a single input trigger. I even have a trackpad for my home desktop setup and literally don't use my traditional mouse unless I'm playing a game that doesn't support controllers.

A good example of this is to compare Windows's app exposé with the MacOS one. In Windows when you swipe up (or down? I forget which one) with 4 (3?) fingers, once you hit a certain point the app exposé just appears no matter how slow or fast you're doing the gesture. On MacOS, you can do the app expose gesture on the trackpad as slow or as fast as you want and it'll animate in time with the speed of your fingers doing the gesture.

[–] TerkErJerbs@lemm.ee 27 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I use these with good success. Can set up global/system-wide or per-app gestures and multi-finger actions. Works good in my opinion.

[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 10 points 4 days ago (2 children)

those only work on x11 right? idk how well they work in Wayland

[–] pewpew@feddit.it 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

On Wayland your DE might get in the way of touchegg with its gestures. I wouldn't reccomend it on Plasma Wayland. (Last time I checked was like two years ago)

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 7 points 4 days ago

With Wayland finally exploding on the scene these past two years, I want to imagine the devs having worked on that. Many distros are already Wayland default and another 5 years and X will mostly be unsupported by most distros

[–] TerkErJerbs@lemm.ee 1 points 4 days ago

That could be the case. My work machine is on Debian 12 and I believe still on x11. I haven't messed with Wayland yet.

[–] daytonah@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

In the new plasma/Wayland it is pretty dope.... I make 4 desktops per activity in a matrix shape and use 2 activities work and home and it's pretty easy to zip a out in the OS and switch activities and desktops with muktifinger scroll, and shortcuts for desktops and activity switching....

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

+1 for using Activities. There's dozens of us!

[–] ZeroEcks@lemmy.ml 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This would normally be a feature of your window manager or desktop environment, which do you use?

[–] Horsey@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I’m in the test phase of all the available ones; KDE is by far my favorite, and I really like gnome as well (but I can’t use it because Dropbox relies on application status icons which are absent from gnome; I tried the extensions to bring that back but they didn’t work for me when I tried them a while back)

[–] stevedice@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

Check this out. It only works on KDE, you have to compile it from source and it's a pain in the ass to configure but it seems like it has all the features you're looking for.

You might also need to add

set(CMAKE_POSITION_INDEPENDENT_CODE ON)

to the CMakeLists to get it to compile.

Such is life.

[–] eugenia@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Linux Mint's Cinnamon has an involved gesture pref panel, but it's not per app, it's system-wide. If the suggestion from the other user for touche/touchegg don't work due to being designed for X11, you're out of luck. What you're asking is a bit too specialized and from what I read from the creator of touchegg on his github, is that Wayland has no way to support these features. So don't expect it in the future either.

[–] Horsey@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I’m basically going to have to refuse to use any app that’s lacking in Wayland support. Really no reason to build a Linux ecosystem that has legacy parts from the get go.

[–] eugenia@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago

From the developer, he said that Wayland has no way to support these features, not that he won't support them. You need the right APIs to develop this app, and while X11 seems to have them, Wayland does not.

[–] DJDarren@thelemmy.club 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I’d love BTT on Linux too. The hardest thing for me with a move from macOS to Linux is losing the ability to zip about the OS with a trackpad. Also, I’ve had BTT set for years so that clicking the middle button on a mouse shows Mission Control. God, I wish I could work out how to do that in Mint.

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 days ago

GNOME's trackpad gestures are excellent, I'm assuming you're using Cinnamon.