Linux Mint is known for being intuitive and beginner-friendly, but did you know it packs one of the most powerful gesture systems in the Linux ecosystem? Here’s a closer look at Cinnamon’s built-in gestures and how they outshine other desktop environments.
Cinnamon has the best built-in gestures
Linux Mint—or any distro running the Cinnamon desktop environment—is quietly packing the best built-in gesture system on Linux. I’ve used GNOME and daily-drive KDE Plasma, but Cinnamon’s implementation is hands down the best I’ve seen. The only problem is that it’s disabled by default and awkwardly tucked away in the System Settings, hidden in plain sight—no wonder no one talks, or even knows, about it.
To enable it, head to System Settings and search for “Gestures” using the search bar. Alternatively, if you’re good at “Where’s Waldo?,” you can find it under the Preferences tab if you look really carefully. Click it to open a clean, graphical interface that shows all possible multitouch gestures and lets you map them to almost any action you want.
For comparison, both GNOME and KDE Plasma—the two most modern and prominent desktop environments—also ship with multitouch gesture support. However, you can’t natively customize their default behavior. To do that, you’d need to install tools like Touchégg, and even then, it’ll be a technically complicated process. However, with Cinnamon, everything is handled through a built-in graphical interface that exposes all available gestures in one place.
I have Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition installed on an ASUS laptop and a desktop using an Apple Magic Trackpad. While gestures work flawlessly on the laptop, they don’t work on my desktop—which I can only assume is a driver issue.
What makes Cinnamon’s gesture system so powerful
There are two key reasons Cinnamon’s gesture system stands out: granularity and customizability. First, you get a graphical tool that neatly lays out every supported gesture type:
- Swipe up
- Swipe down
- Swipe left
- Swipe right
- Pinch in
- Pinch out
- Tap
Each of these gestures can be performed with two, three, four, or five fingers. Do the math, and that gives you 28 unique gesture combinations, all of which can be mapped to different—or even repeating—actions.
Now, out of the box, Cinnamon assigns some sensible defaults, such as switching virtual desktops, tiling windows, or raising and lowering the volume. However, what really sets it apart, is the ability to map terminal commands to these gestures. For instance, you can trigger Bash scripts with four-finger swipes, or run a command with a four-finger tap. This effectively lets you tap into the automation power of the Linux terminal and execute it through intuitive touchpad gestures.
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The difference between touchpad gestures and touchscreen gestures
There’s a reason the setting is called “Gestures” and not “Touchpad Gestures”—it lets you configure gestures for both touchpads and touchscreens, and some options are exclusive to touchscreens. For example, all tap gestures and five-finger gestures (both swiping and pinching) are touchscreen-only—you can’t perform them on a touchpad.
Two-finger swiping is also reserved for touchscreens, which, I agree, is a sensible choice. Touchpads already use two-finger swipes for scrolling, and assigning additional actions to that gesture would interfere with the overall user experience.
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My personal gestures configuration on Linux Mint Cinnamon
Now that you have an idea of how powerful Cinnamon’s gesture system really is, let’s talk about how you can actually use it. Here’s a quick overview of how I’ve configured gestures on my system to give you some practical ideas.
First, I’m a heavy workspace (virtual desktop) user, so I rely on three-finger swipe gestures to move between them effortlessly—which also happens to be the default setup in Linux Mint. Here’s what I use:
- Three-finger swipe left = Switch to left workspace
- Three-finger swipe right = Switch to right workspace
- Three-finger swipe up = Open Expo (workspace selector)
- Three-finger swipe down = Open window selector
For four-finger swipe gestures, I’ve configured them to launch specific apps using custom terminal commands:
- Four-finger swipe right = Opens the file manager (Nemo), tiled to the left edge of the screen. To do this, I use this command: nemo & sleep 1; xdotool search –class nemo windowactivate && xdotool key Super+Left
- Four-finger swipe left = Opens the web browser (Brave), tiled to the right edge of the screen. To do this, I use this command: brave & sleep 1; xdotool search –class brave windowactivate && xdotool key Super+Right
- Four-finger swipe down = Opens the terminal. To do this, I use this command: gnome-terminal
- Four-finger swipe up = Shows the desktop. This function is available as one of the default options, so you don’t need to use a custom command.
I could’ve launched Nemo and Brave with simple commands like “nemo” or “brave”. The extra steps are there to ensure the windows snap to the left or right side of the screen. For that, I’m using the xdotool utility. If you want to replicate this setup, install it with: sudo apt install xdotool
I’ve also configured four-finger pinch in and pinch out to zoom out and zoom in on the desktop. I find this useful as a desktop-level magnifier. Both options are available by default, so there’s no need to write any custom commands. I’ve kept two-finger pinching disabled so it doesn’t interfere with apps that already use that gesture for zooming. I’ve also disabled three-finger pinching because it feels unintuitive—but if the gesture works for you, it opens up two more slots for you to customize.
Most Linux Mint users never discover how capable Cinnamon’s gesture system really is—but now you know better. Take five minutes configuring it, and it can completely change how you interact with your desktop.
