MyGestures - Pure Wayland/Evdev mouse gestures for Linux

Mouse gestures - "draw" commands using your mouse/touchscreen/touchpad. Now written in Rust and completely independent of X11 and legacy drivers.

Installing from source:

Install dependencies:

Ubuntu / Debian:

sudo apt install pkg-config libgtk-4-dev libevdev-dev git meson ninja-build cargo

Fedora:

sudo dnf install pkgconf-pkg-config gtk4-devel libevdev-devel git meson ninja-build cargo

Alpine:

apk add git meson cargo sudo make
apk add glib-dev cairo-dev gdk4 gdk-pixbuf-dev pango-dev gtk4.0-dev

Build and Install:

You can compile and install mygestures either using the compatibility wrapper Makefile or directly using meson.

Option A: Using the Makefile wrapper (Recommended)

git clone https://github.com/deters/mygestures.git
cd mygestures/
make
sudo make install

Option B: Using Meson directly

git clone https://github.com/deters/mygestures.git
cd mygestures/
meson setup build
meson compile -C build
sudo meson install -C build

The installation process automatically installs the mygestures and gestos binaries, installs the udev rules, reloads the udev system, and adds your user to the input group if necessary.

Usage:

• mygestures: Start the daemon. Uses default button (button 3 / right-click) on the default mouse device.
• gestos: Start the GTK4 GUI configuration editor.

To use gestures: Hold the trigger button (default: right-click / button 3) and move the mouse to draw a gesture. Release the button to execute.

Troubleshooting:

Gestures not working or no response:

1. Wrong device: The daemon auto-detects standard pointer devices. If yours is not captured, find its path in /dev/input/by-path/ and run mygestures -d '/dev/input/by-path/event-mouse'.
2. Permissions: Ensure you have installed the udev rules (see above) and configured permissions. By default, the udev rules restrict access to the input group for security. You can configure mygestures with Set-Group-ID (SGID) privileges to run securely, or fallback to standard uaccess/input group setups. Running the binary will output detailed instructions on both options.
3. Trigger Button: If you are on a laptop with a touchpad, you might need to use button 1 (left-click) instead of 3. Try mygestures -b 1.
4. Missing /dev/uinput (e.g. Alpine Linux): On some distributions like Alpine Linux, the uinput kernel module is not loaded by default, and /dev/uinput will not exist. Load it manually using sudo modprobe uinput. To make this persistent on boot, add uinput to /etc/modules (or /etc/modules-load.d/uinput.conf). (Note: If you install MyGestures using the pre-built packages (.deb, .rpm, .apk), the package installation automatically sets up the modules-load rules to load the uinput module on boot.)

Gestures configuration:

On first execution, MyGestures will create a configuration file for your user:

~/.config/mygestures/mygestures.yaml

Gestures are defined using coordinate paths matched using the Protractor gesture recognition algorithm.

Example of mygestures.yaml:

global:
  "Close window":
    move: "0,0 0,100 100,100"  # drawn as an 'L' shape
    do: kill

  "Maximize window":
    move: "50,100 50,0"        # drawn upwards
    do: toggle-maximized

  "Copy":
    move: "100,0 0,0 0,100 100,100"
    do: keypress Control_L+C

Supported Actions:

Window Management

• do: maximize # Maximizes focused window
• do: restore # Restores maximized window
• do: iconify # Minimizes/hides window
• do: toggle-maximized # Toggles window maximization state
• do: raise # Raises window
• do: lower # Lowers window
• do: toggle-fullscreen # Toggles window fullscreen state

Program Operations

• do: kill # Closes the active window
• do: exec <cmd> # Executes a custom shell command (e.g. exec gedit)

Keyboard/Mouse Simulation

• do: keypress <keys> # Simulates a keyboard shortcut (e.g. keypress Control_L+c)
• do: click <button> # Emulates a mouse click (e.g. click 3 for right-click)

Desktop/Compositor-Agnostic Actions

(Supported on Sway, Hyprland, GNOME, and KDE)

• do: workspace-left
• do: workspace-right
• do: workspace-up
• do: workspace-down
• do: show-overview # Toggles activities overview
• do: show-app-grid # Shows application view
• do: show-desktop
• do: lock-screen
• do: terminal
• do: volume-up
• do: volume-down
• do: volume-mute
• do: media-play
• do: media-next
• do: media-prev

License

GPL-2.0-or-later