2-Finger Pinch Zoom Gesture not working smoothly on KDE

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1

Hello, I’m new to Linux and Manjaro. I’m trying to set my gestures similar to how they were set on my old Mac Book Air. I’ve set up the 3 finger swipe properly, however, I’m having trouble getting 2-finger pinch zoom to work properly.

I did get it to work using xdotool key Control + 0x002b & xdotool key Control + 0x002d. But that doesn’t zoom in and out smoothly, it’s very choppy.

I currently have it set to xdotool key Meta+0x002b & xdotool key Meta+0x002d for zoom in and out, but it doesn’t do anything.

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Install xdotool and libinput-gestures:

sudo pacman -S xdotool libinput-gestures

Follow these steps to configure libinput-gestures:

sudo gpasswd -a <user_name> input #add user in input group
libinput-gestures-setup desktop #set up the application using your [DE](https://specifications.freedesktop.org/autostart-spec/autostart-spec-latest.html)
libinput-gestures-setup autostart #enable the app to start automatically in the background
libinput-gestures-setup start #start the app immediately in the background:

Make a file ~/.config/libinput-gestures.conf and add these contents:

# Go back/forward in chrome
gesture: swipe right 3 xdotool key Alt+Left
gesture: swipe left 3 xdotool key Alt+Right

# Zoom in / Zoom out
gesture: pinch out xdotool key Ctrl+plus
gesture: pinch in xdotool key Ctrl+minus
  
# Switch between desktops
gesture: swipe left 4 xdotool set_desktop --relative 1
gesture: swipe right 4 xdotool set_desktop --relative -- -1

Reboot :crossed_fingers:

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PS: you can also use the gestures GUI application for libinput-gestures if you don’t want to work with the config file

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https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gestures/

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5

I have used both. work well on Plasma KDE. two fingers zoom in and out work in firefox.

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Thank you for the response.

So, I actually did those steps initially with the GUI app. I was able to get Zoom in / Zoom out to work using Ctrl+plus & Ctrl+minus; except that I just used the codes 0x002b and 0x002d respectively.

But, that type of zoom looks choppy to me and I see that you can zoom in/out using the windows/meta/super key + plus or minus. The second option look much smoother and it would be nice if I could do that instead. To reiterate, I’d like to zoom in/out using the Windows/Meta/Super key and not with the control key.

However, when I added that in the gestures app it didn’t work. So if I add:
gesture pinch out xdotool key Meta + 0x002b
gesture pinch in xdotool key Meta + 0x002d
Neither of them work

Thank you for showing me to switch between desktops by the way, I was wondering how I could do that.

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This should be like this:

gesture: pinch out xdotool key Meta+0x002b
gesture: pinch in xdotool key Meta+0x002d
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Sorry, that is how I actually have it in the gestures GUI app, I typed it wrong in the forum.

It still doesn’t work with that format.

9

We can give it a try by using Meta_L instead of Meta:

gesture: pinch out xdotool key 0xffe7+0x002b
gesture: pinch in xdotool key 0xffe7+0x002d
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It didn’t work, when I use the gestures it does nothing.

11

This did work with Ctrl+plus and same for minus. The default zoom in/out for kde is Meta+equal and Meta+minus. So rather than using + and - use = and -:

gesture: pinch out xdotool key Meta_L+equal
gesture: pinch in xdotool key Meta_L+minus

:crossed_fingers:

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It still doesn’t seem to be working.

In my GUI Gestures app I have
xdotool key 0xffe7+0x003d
for Meta_L+equal
and
xdotool key 0xffe7+0x002d
for Meta_L+minus

In the config file it’s formatted like this
gesture pinch in 2 xdotool key 0xffe7+0x003d
gesture pinch out 2 xdotool key 0xffe7+0x002d

13

I won’t be able to help any further. You can go through these steps again and replace the lines at the bottom:

Also consider going through this:

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Worked!

Use Super_L instead of Meta_L. This is how the config looks:

# Zoom in / Zoom out
gesture: pinch out xdotool key Super_L+equal
gesture: pinch in xdotool key Super_L+minus

Make sure you are using the default shortcuts for zoom in/out in kde shortcut settings. This is strange because it wasn’t working with Meta even though here it’s given Meta only:

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