1954378 - Touchpad gesture for swiping through tabs

Status: ASSIGNED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[dyego]

Attachment: 2025-03-16 16-20-55-WPP.mp4

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:136.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/136.0

Steps to reproduce:

Chrome OS has a really great gesture for changing browser tabs with the laptop touchpad by using a three finger swipe gesture. It really improves a lot the browsing experience when using a laptop.

additional context:

Mozilla Connect feature request
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/touchpad-mousepad-gesture-swipe-through-tabs-on-desktop/idi-p/13867

Youtube video showcasing the feature in ChromeOs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImBqo6ExKc4&t=73s

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However, bringing this to Firefox is not that straight forward, since most operating systems already have some binding for the three finger swipe gesture.

I think that a good alternative would be to use a new 2 finger hold + 1 finger swipe gesture to trigger this behavior. I've attached a video showcasing this gesture in a POC patch that I hacked together.

I'd like to get some feedback to know whether this makes sense before committing on a proper implementation.

Comment 1

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez (:emilio)]

Implementing this would be a mix of APZ and browser-gestureSupport.js I guess?

Comment 2

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez (:emilio)]

As I mentioned on Matrix, I think that gesture is kinda hard to use, but that's just a personal opinion. Maybe Cmd/Ctrl + two-finger swipe or so?

Anyways cc'd some folks that might have stronger opinions.

Comment 3

[dyego]

Attachment: WIP: Touchpad gesture for swiping through tabs

This is a really early WIP for https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1954378#c0

Comment 4

[dyego]

I agree that this isn't very intuitive. However I didn't think of any intuitive gesture that isn't already being used for some other action. I don't love Ctrl + swipe because I think the goal with this gesture is to allow for navigation only using the touchpad.

Comment 5

[dyego]

Attachment: using thumb to trigger the gesture

Comment 6

[dyego]

a better way for triggering this gesture is using the thumb instead of the index finger.