Libinput released version 1.28.0 today, which finally introduced the long requested three-finger drag gesture support for touchpads!
The big new feature in this release is three-finger drag for touchpads. When enabled three fingers down on the touchpad will logically hold the left mouse button down, any movement of the fingers then moves the pointer for a drag. For some users this is a more precise and easier-to-trigger interaction than e.g. tap-and-drag.
Similar to macOS three-finger drag feature, it’s a swipe gesture that emulates a button down + motion + button up sequence, and can be configured to use either 3-finger or 4-finger.
When fingers are released, and two fingers remain, it keeps dragging. And similar to the tap drag lock feature, when 3/4 fingers are set down immediately after releasing all fingers the drag continues.
Besides the multi-touch drag gesture, libinput 1.28.0 also added/updated device-specific quirks, including:
- Add Apple Magic Trackpad v2 2024.
- Add Apple Magic Trackpad v2 USB-C.
- Raise AttrTrackpointMultiplier for ThinkPad T470/T480/A485 to 0.75.
- Add Dell Haptics Touchpad.
- Disable MT_TOOL_PALM for the Yoga Slim 7i Carbon.
- Add RazerBlade182024 Keyboard.
- Set pressure pad for ThinkPad X9 15 Gen 1 Forcepad
- Add pressure pad quirk for Lenovo ThinkBook 14 G7+ IAH.
- Add quirks for Dell laptop with Goodix Touchpad.
Install Libinput 1.28.0 to Enable 3/4 finger dragging
Besides compiling the new library from source tarball (see the link above), I’ve built it into unofficial Ubuntu PPAs for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, and Ubuntu 24.10 on amd64 and arm64/armhf platforms.
NOTE 1: The PPA package is NOT well tested. It MAY NOT work on some devices. Use it at your own risk!
NOTE 1: The new three-finger drag is disabled by default, and, so far no compositor offers config option for it. I built the package with the feature enabled, but separated into 2 PPAs: one for 3-finger drag, another for 4-finger drag.
NOTE 2: Enable 3-finger drag will disable GNOME’s default gestures (while 4-finger drag won’t).
1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open up a terminal window. When it opens, run either command below to add PPA:
- For 3-finger touchpad drag support, add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/libinput
- For the 4-finger drag, add this PPA instead:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/libinput-4fg
2. After added PPA, run the command below to manually refresh package cache:
sudo apt update
3. Finally, run the command below to update the libinput library:
sudo apt install libinput-bin libinput10 libinput-tools
If it does not install, try adding -t "o=ubuntuhandbook1-libinput-4fg" (skip -4fg for another PPA) in last command to specify where to install the package from.
Finally, log out and log back in to apply change.
4. Clean up. After installed the packages, you may remove the PPAs by either running command below in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/libinput-4fg
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/libinput
Or use “Software & Updates” to remove corresponding source lines under Other Software tab.
How to restore the default libinput library
For any reason, you can easily revert back to the default libinput library by running the commands below one by one in terminal:
- First, run command to check available package versions:
apt policy libinput-tools
In the output, copy the available package version from system repositories.
- Then, run the command below to install libinput with specified package version:
sudo apt install libinput10=x.xx.x-xxx libinput-tools=x.xx.x-xxx libinput-bin=x.xx.x-xxx
Here you need to replace
x.xx.x-xxxto the package version according to the last command.
Also, log out and back in to apply change.
