Support 3-finger scroll to navigate the thumbnails

[ndaskalovic]

Is your feature suggestion related to a problem? Please describe.
would be much faster to add trackpad gestures, and/or support trackpad scrolling to cycle through windows. similar to windows 10 gestures.

Describe the solution you'd like
three finger swipe on trackpad to scroll through windows backwards and forwards.
Describe alternatives you've considered
ive tried using BTT and native app switcher which does work when assigning three finger swipe to activate app switcher. but of course alt-tab has much better features that I require such as showing all open windows instead of just apps as well as app previews. would be nice to have the best of both worlds.

[lwouis]

I'd like to clarify the feature you touch on.

I played with the built-in app switcher. It seems to respond to scrolling. That is, with the mouse wheel, or with the trackpad:

• Scrolling the mouse wheel up and down scroll the app icons left and right
• Swiping with 2 fingers left and right scroll the app icons left and right
• Swiping with 2 fingers up and down scroll the app icons left and right

I think it can be summed up with: scrolling with any device moves selection left or right. Scrolling horizontally or vertically are remapped to the same direction (i.e. up is right, bottom is left).

Currently in AltTab, you can already scroll. Mouse or trackpad. The difference is that scrolling doesn't move the selection around. Instead it move the viewport (i.e. visible portion of the windows list) around. It doesn't show if you have only a few windows listed, but try to open like 30 windows, and you will see how scrolling moves the viewport.

I think this should be a preference, as the current behavior may be preferred by some people. If you have frequently 100+ open windows, you may not want you scroll down to scan all rows from left to right until you reach the bottom. You may want what is today current behavior instead.

The new preference could be:

Scrolling: * Scrolls the view up or down
           * Select the next or previous window

Note: what the OS qualifies as a scroll event can be customized through System Preferences > Trackpad, or with tools such as BTT, but AltTab shouldn't bind to specifics, and instead obey scroll events, however they get generated.

What do you think?

[ndaskalovic]

Hi, I understand the preference for most people. Personally, I never have more than 10-12 windows open at the same time so I never need to scroll the viewfinder. I don’t know if you have tried the one on windows too. With a three finger swipe you can move around the app switcher and select apps and then release to go into that app. You can move up, down, left,right and diagonally. I find that much better to use as then I can use BTT to assign a swipe to open alt-tab and then simply move around with my fingers already on the trackpad instead of haven’t to use one finger to move the mouse to the app I wish to switch to. It works great with a Bluetooth mouse, I assigned option -tab to the middle button on my mx master 2s and I can quickly go to an app and hover over, then release the button and it quickly switches. Essentially, for me, I would love to see a configuration that would mimic the windows 10 app switcher with trackpad gestures perfectly. I feel like that was the best way to switch apps. It uses a three finger swipe so I don’t think it register the movement as scrolling. Thanks, Nicholas

…

Sent from my iPhone On 14 Dec 2020, at 11:05, lwouis <[email protected]> wrote:  I'd like to clarify the feature you touch on. I played with the built-in app switcher. It seems to respond to scrolling. That is, with the mouse wheel, or with the trackpad: * Scrolling the mouse wheel up and down scroll the app icons left and right * Swiping with 2 fingers left and right scroll the app icons left and right * Swiping with 2 fingers up and down scroll the app icons left and right I think it can be summed up with: scrolling with any device moves selection left or right. Scrolling horizontally or vertically are remapped to the same direction (i.e. up is right, bottom is left). Currently in AltTab, you can already scroll. Mouse of trackpad. The difference is that scrolling doesn't move the selection around. Instead it move the viewport (i.e. visible portion of the windows list) around. It doesn't show if you have only a few windows listed, but try to open like 30 windows, and you will see how scrolling moves the viewport. I think this should be a preference, as the current behavior may be preferred by some people. If you have frequently 100+ open windows, you may not want you scroll down to scan all rows from left to right until you reach the bottom. You may want what is today current behavior instead. The new preference could be: Scrolling: * Scrolls the view up or down * Select the next or previous window Note: what the OS qualifies as a scroll event can be customized through System Preferences > Trackpad, or with tools such as BTT, but AltTab shouldn't bind to specifics, and instead obey scroll events, however they get generated. What do you think? — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#730 (comment)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ANJUPWZYKX5FRXH6QGXQIILSUXPMZANCNFSM4UZ7OILQ>.

[lwouis]

I never experienced the trackpad UX on Windows 10. I need to give it a go, it sounds interacting to use the full 360 degrees of freedom of the trackpad, compared to the linear scrolling of a mouse wheel. Some mouse actually have 2-axis or 360 scrolling balls or scrolling trackpad, so the Windows 10 trackpad UX could be made available there as well.

I need to see if I can experience this in a VM on my macbook.

[lwouis]

To recap, this ticket here is about swiping on the trackpad while the app is open. #756 on the other hand is about triggering AltTab with a trackpad gesture.

In addition, I think the mouse wheel behavior that we have today is better than the alternative (see the built-in app switcher) of going thumbnail by thumbnail. The reasoning being that if you're using a mouse, you can scroll to quickly see all thumbnails, then mouse the mouse on the target and click, instead of scrolling to move the focus until you reach the right one.

Based on the built-in app switcher, we probably want to respond to 2-fingers swipe. The built-in switcher also responds to 3, 4, and even 5-fingers, however, it only responds to those if System Preference > Trackpad doesn't make use of any 3/4-fingers action. It's too complex for my taste. I'll enable 2-fingers swiping within AltTab, in all dimensions. Maybe more fingers will be added in the scope of #756, so that the user can open AltTab then swipe around seemlessly.

[ris58h]

I've made a PoC to support 3-finger swipes to activate AltTab and navigate between thumbnails master...ris58h:alt-tab-macos:swipes
It uses M5MultitouchSupport pod so pod install is required after checkout.

How to use it:

1. Use 3-finger swipe left/right to show AltTab UI.
2. Use 3-finger swipe left/right/up/down to navigate between thumbnails.
3. Release fingers to switch to selected window.

Issues:

• User has to disable 3-finger swipe between full-screen apps or make it 4-finger in System Settings > Trackpad > More Gestures > Swipe between full-screen apps.
• No settings. It's not clear to me where they should be added.
• App crashes after sleep. See Crash after sleep mhuusko5/M5MultitouchSupport#1
• Only 3-finger swipes are supported.
• App Expose activates if swipe down with 3-fingers right after AltTab activation. There is no issue if wait for some time.

@lwouis could you check it?

[lwouis]

Hi @ris58h,

Thank you for sharing your work!

I've made a PR from your branch, so that I can add inline comments to discuss it with you.

Could you please have a look in the PR to discuss further?

Thank you 🙇