My setup (Windows)
Last updated
Last updated
Finally, intuitive and useful touchpad gestures on Windows, akin to MacOS.
I have customized my touchpad gesture shortcuts entirely in Windows. You can achieve this in both Windows 10 and Windows 11. The gestures are not identical to MacOS — actually, we can do some actions that aren't even possible in MacOS — but the gestures are intuitive and more useful than the default Windows gestures.
First of all you need to open the 💻 Windows Settings app. Go to Bluetooth & devices, and choose Touchpad. In the Related settings section, choose Advanced gestures.
Expand the Configure three-finger gestures section. From each drop-down list, you can choose from an array of options, or you can choose Custom shortcut if you want to use your own keyboard shortcut.
I am used to three-finger tap for "middle click", which has been standard functionality in Linux forever.
I also set the three-finger swipes to activate the window snapping shortcuts:
🪟+⬆️ on swipe up, to maximize a window,
🪟+⬇️ on swipe down, to restore/minimize a window,
🪟+⬅️ on swipe left, to snap a window to the left,
🪟+➡️ on swipe right, to snap a window to the right.
It is better to use custom shortcut for these functions than to use the in-built options from the lists.
Choose Custom shortcut.
Click Start recording.
Press the keyboard shortcut sequence that does the desired action.
Click Stop recording.
Done!
Combining any of these swipes with pressing the Alt key will also trigger the associated window function:
🪟+Alt+⬆️ on swipe up, to snap a window to the top half of the screen,
🪟+Alt+⬇️ on swipe down, to snap a window to the bottom half of the screen,
🪟+Alt+⬅️ on swipe left, to snap a window to a third of the screen and move it to the left,
🪟+Alt+➡️ on swipe right, to snap a window to a third of the screen and move it to the right.
Expand the Configure four-finger gestures section. From each drop-down list, you can choose from an array of options, or you can choose Custom shortcut if you want to use your own keyboard shortcut.
I have the four-finger tap set to open the Notification centre, but to be honest I rarely use this and instead use 🪟+N. (Actually I use my own custom shortcut, set to 🪟+A for reachable position.)
Swipe up: set to Task view or Switch apps. With Switch apps, you can keep your fingers on the touchpad and slide around to select the window that you want to switch to.
Swipe down: set to Volume down. This is very useful if you are regularly connecting your computer to screens & speakers and giving presentations, because maybe you will suddenly need to turn the volume down quickly. Swiping down even a tiny bit activates the volume control, so you can also use this to turn the volume up.
Swipe left & right: I have these set to switch desktops, because multiple desktops is hardwired into my computer usage from back in my Linux days. (I don't use multiple desktops very much any more.) You could also use these to skip to the next or previous track, but you have to record the custom shortcut as a keyboard shortcut, so you need to have track-skip keys or have configured custom keyboard shortcuts via software such as PowerToys (which does have a habit of sometimes deactivating itself so this is not 100% foolproof).
