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Kohei Yamada
Kohei Yamada

Posted on • Updated on

Enhance Your Touchpad Experience on Linux with ThumbSense!

Hello everyone! 🌟

What is ThumbSense?

With ThumbSense, you can use your laptop's touchpad as an additional modifier key.
Assign specific keys as mouse buttons and toggle their functionality based on whether your thumb is touching the touchpad. This feature allows you to keep your hands on the home position of the keyboard.
By turning off the often troublesome "tap to click" feature, you can achieve a more comfortable touchpad experience.

Repository

Thumbsense is implemented as a plugin of fusuma.

https://github.com/iberianpig/fusuma-plugin-thumbsense

Key Features:

  • Seamless integration with the touchpad gesture tool, Fusuma
  • A stable mouse-like experience without moving your hands away from the keyboard.
  • Customize key-to-mouse button mappings using YAML.

Installation and setup

$ sudo apt-get install libevdev-dev ruby-dev build-essential

$ echo 'KERNEL=="uinput", MODE="0660", GROUP="input", OPTIONS+="static_node=uinput"' | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/60-udev-fusuma-remap.rules

$ sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger

$ sudo gem install fusuma-plugin-thumbsense
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Customize with yaml

Set the following code in ~/.config/fusuma/config.yml.

---
context: 
  thumbsense: true

remap:
  J: BTN_LEFT
  K: BTN_RIGHT
  F: BTN_LEFT
  D: BTN_RIGHT
  SPACE: BTN_LEFT
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thumbsense

Dragging and Swipe gesture with Fusuma<br>

Give it a try and let us know your thoughts! With your feedback and collaboration, let's make touchpad usage more intuitive and efficient!

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