Bug 98802

Summary:	RFE: libinput should let a thumb used for clicking rest anywhere on the pad, not just on the bottom edge
Product:	Wayland	Reporter:	Nate Graham <nate>
Component:	libinput	Assignee:	Wayland bug list <wayland-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED MOVED	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium	CC:	nate, peter.hutterer
Version:	1.5.0
Hardware:	x86-64 (AMD64)
OS:	Linux (All)
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:
Bug Depends on:	94236, 99703
Bug Blocks:
Attachments:	Thumb clicking while finger moves the pointer

Description Nate Graham 2016-11-21 05:33:23 UTC

I have an HP Spectre x360 (Kaby Lake) with a touchpad, running Fedora 25, GNOME 3.22, Wayland, and libinput 1.5.1 (release 1.fc25).

Having moved to Fedora 25 from macOS, one thing I miss is the inability to rest my thumb anywhere on the pad, click with my thumb, and manipulate the cursor/scroll with fingers. libinput only ignores a thumb if it's resting on a tiny strip on the bottom of the pad. macOS does a really amazing job of ignoring a stationary thumb used only for clicking that's anywhere at all on the pad, and I and many others adapted to this behavior, which is really nice.

It would be great if libinput could do the same thing and just totally ignore a stationary thumb used only for clicking, no matter where it is on the pad. Since thumbs are big, and a thumb used in this way is likely to be resting horizontally, it should show up as a large surface area and hopefully be easy to detect.

Comment 1 Peter Hutterer 2016-11-22 01:20:27 UTC

macOS has the advantage of not having to care about other touchpads and the ones they have are really good. Most touchpads are somewhere between terrible and unreliable though with the upcoming switch for many touchpads from PS/2 to RMI4 in (expectedly) kernel 4.10 this situation hopefully improves.

so far any attempt at using pressure to detect thumbs has failed, each touchpad is vastly different and we'd have to keep hw-specific overrides for every touchpad to figure out whether we can use it. because of that, we haven't had a reliable implementation yet either.

Comment 2 Peter Hutterer 2017-09-06 06:03:32 UTC

Bug 99703 has been updated with a patchset, this should resolve some of the issues here too.

Comment 3 Peter Hutterer 2017-10-26 05:33:50 UTC

I just realised this one doesn't have an evemu recording. Please attach one of your thumb clicking here so I have the information on hand if I ever get to this (don't know what extra properties your touchpad supports). Thanks

Comment 4 Nate Graham 2017-10-26 12:56:39 UTC

Created attachment 135060 [details]
Thumb clicking while finger moves the pointer

Comment 5 Peter Hutterer 2018-03-12 04:11:17 UTC

Help needed.

Please do not add 'me too' to this bug, we need this feature implemented (or at least ideas on what to implement). see comment #1.

Comment 6 GitLab Migration User 2018-06-05 09:58:02 UTC

-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to freedesktop.org's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/issues/4.

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