Bug 98802 - RFE: libinput should let a thumb used for clicking rest anywhere on the pad, not just on the bottom edge
Summary: RFE: libinput should let a thumb used for clicking rest anywhere on the pad, ...
Status: RESOLVED MOVED
Alias: None
Product: Wayland
Classification: Unclassified
Component: libinput (show other bugs)
Version: 1.5.0
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64) Linux (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: Wayland bug list
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on: 94236 99703
Blocks:
  Show dependency tree / graph
 
Reported: 2016-11-21 05:33 UTC by Nate Graham
Modified: 2018-06-05 09:58 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
i915 platform:
i915 features:

Attachments
Thumb clicking while finger moves the pointer (124.18 KB, text/plain)
2017-10-26 12:56 UTC, Nate Graham 		Details
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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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