This is the set of steps you need to take to enable complex touchpad gestures in Manjaro (KDE, but should work for other desktop environments as well). By default, single and double finger gestures should work and are configurable in the default touchpad configuration settings. However, three finger and other gestures are not available by default. In order to enable these, you need to do the following:
- Install libinput-gestures
- Install gestures
- Install xdotool
- Configure libinput-gestures to start by default
- Add your user to the input group
- Use gestures to configure your complex gestures
- Profit! (you’ll need to log out and log back in before this step)
Configure libinput-gestures to start by default by adding an autostart entry in KDE (adjust accordingly for your desktop environment).
Add your user to the input group by running sudo gpasswd -a $USER input
Now you should be able to use gestures UI to configure your complex gestures. Here are two common ones that I use to map three finger left/right swipe to browser back/forward:
gesture swipe left 3 xdotool key alt+Left
gesture swipe right 3 xdotool key alt+Right