Touchégg, the popular Linux multi-touch gesture recognizer, released new 2.0.18 version on Sunday!

The new release of this free open-source application, added ability to execute actions both when the touch gesture starts and ends.

Touchégg is a Linux app that supports all hardware supported by libinput, though it only works on classic X11/Xorg session (no Wayland support). And, it’s default in Linux Mint since 21.2.

It runs silently in background. When you perform touchpad or touchscreen gestures, e.g., swipe or pinch, it transforms them into pre-defined actions and executes correspondingly.

The app supports swipe, pinch, and tap gestures with 2, 3, 4, 5 fingers (some excluded as they have system built-in actions) in both global or per-app basis. And, it can transform them to window resize, tile window, workspace switch, mouse click, keyboard shortcut, and execute command actions.

Touché – the graphical Touchégg configuration tool

Previously, it supports keyboard shortcut, mouse click and run a command actions that execute on either “gesture begin” or “gesture end”. Now, the actions have new choice to execute on gesture begin-and-end.

For mouse click action, it presses down the mouse button when gesture starts, and releases it when gesture ends.

In the case for running a command action, an environment variable is set TOUCHEGG_GESTURE_ON, allowing the executed script to take different actions at the beginning and the end of the gesture.

And, as you see in the screenshot above, the graphical Touché configuration tool is updated with the new “Gesture begin and end” option when you choose to simulate one of the 3 actions mentioned above.

How to Install Touchégg 2.0.18

NOTE: as mentioned, Touchégg does NOT work on Wayland session that’s default in Ubuntu since 22.04.

The application offers .rpm and .deb packages as well as source tarball, which are available to download at the Github releases page:

For Ubuntu (20.04, 22.04, 24.04 and 24.10) and Linux Mint, just open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run commands below one by one to install it from the official PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:touchegg/stable

sudo apt update

sudo apt install touchegg

After installed the application, run the command below to make sure it’s running properly in the backgound:

systemctl status touchegg.service

Then, either copy /usr/share/touchegg/touchegg.conf file into local ~/.config/touchegg (create if not exist) directory and edit to configure the gestures.

Or, install Touché flatpak package to configure via a graphical interface:

• First, Linux Mint and Fedora Workstation (with 3rd party repository enabled) may search and install Touché from either Software Manager or GNOME Software.
• For Debian, Ubuntu, and their based systems, open terminal and run command to install the daemon package first:

  sudo apt install flatpak

  Other Linux may follow the official setup guide to enable Flatpak support.

• Finally, install the graphical configuration tool by running command:

  flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/com.github.joseexposito.touche.flatpakref

  

• Or, run the command below to update the package:

  flatpak update com.github.joseexposito.touche

After installed the tool, launch it from menu (log out and back in if app icon not visible) or by running the command below in terminal:

flatpak run com.github.joseexposito.touche

Finally configure your touch gestures either global or in app basis and enjoy!