The wayland session of GNOME 40 got a major uplift to touch gestures compared to GNOME 3.38. Here's a brief chat I had with Zamundaa mentioning this: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/oe2t8k/multitouch_touchscreen_gesture_support_in_kde/h449ahm?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 The changes to GNOME 40 were: * Drag window with one finger to corner : window snapping * Swipe to upper left corner : toggle overview * Swipe from the upper edge down on an empty space in the panel : get control and drag current window without using titlebar or headerbar * Swipe from the upper edge down on top of a top panel widget (like calendar, tray or a11y): open widget even if they're not visible (e.g. with zoom) * Swipe 3 or more fingers left or right : switch virtual desktops * Swipe 3 or more fingers up : open virtual desktops activities overview * Swipe 3 or more fingers left or right while in overview : switch virtual desktops * Swipe up again : open app drawer * Swipe 1 or more fingers while on app drawer : switch pages * Swipe app in virtual desktop thumbnail : pull it to different virtual desktop In other words, it was an amazing release for touchscreen support, and it fits their desktop well. As can be seen here, Plasma is already able to detect at least ten different fingers (even if it starts lagging at that point), as shown by the Touch Points desktop effect: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/od9bu6/unique_desktop_effect_for_touch_screens_touch/ Yet there's practically no touchscreen gestures. There was no report to track this either. Having touchscreen gestures at some point in the future would improve the Plasma experience IMO. This would also require quite some thought put into it, because global Plasma touchscreen gestures should: 1. Take into account the uniqueness of Plasma (it isn't one-axis-workspace centered like GNOME) 2. Take into account Plasma mobile (like Zamundaa mentions above) 3. Not break applications that also use touch input (Gwenview, Koko and Pix all have pinch to zoom for instance) Using 3 or more fingers like GNOME did looks like a good idea.
We already have a few on Wayland, the problem is that they don't follow your fingers; see Bug 401479. I agree that it's important for us to make big improvements in this area, though.
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/1617
Git commit 8914a6c50e1d1fba919b436eb42471421362d838 by Xaver Hugl. Committed on 27/03/2022 at 17:09. Pushed by ericedlund into branch 'master'. add global touchscreen gestures Swipe with three fingers - left to switch to the previous virtual desktop - right to switch to the next virtual desktop - up and down to toggle the overview M +4 -0 autotests/test_virtual_desktops.cpp M +5 -0 src/effects.cpp M +1 -0 src/effects.h M +2 -0 src/effects/overview/overvieweffect.cpp M +43 -20 src/globalshortcuts.cpp M +18 -8 src/globalshortcuts.h M +123 -5 src/input.cpp M +3 -0 src/input.h M +10 -0 src/libkwineffects/kwineffects.h M +1 -1 src/touch_input.cpp M +3 -0 src/virtualdesktops.cpp https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/commit/8914a6c50e1d1fba919b436eb42471421362d838