Did you know you can switch tabs in Firefox by making a twisting motion with your fingers on a multi-touch surface? I did. Turns out I’ve been doing it for months — I thought I was late to the party and was too ashamed to mention it to anybody for fear of an epic internet ribbing (”What, you just figured that out?”). But no, apparently it was top secret and highly experimental. That was in the beta, though; it looks like the official version has reduced it to a hack. Fortunately, mastering this multi-touch-enabling technique will allow you to tweak your gestures, resulting in everlasting glory.
- Simply open a new tab (I’ll wait) —
- Put “about:config” in the address bar, no quotes. It’ll ask you if you’re sure. Yes, you are. You are okay.
- Ready? Okay, now type “twist” into the search box.
- Double-click on the twist right, and put “Browser:NextTab” into the box, without the quotes.
- Theeen, in twist left, put “Browser:PrevTab” without the quotes.
- You’re done! Now, I found the gesture (it applies immediately, try putting one finger down and rotating another around it) to be a bit slow to respond, so I changed that other setting, the threshold one, from its default (25) to 10. You can mess around and figure out what’s best for you.
See, tweaking is easy! If you’re afraid you’ve ruined something, just right-click (or “context menu click”) on any box you’ve modified and hit reset.
Curiosity piqued? Type “gesture” into the search box and try modifying a few of those settings. I don’t particularly like the twist, so I’m about to set tab switching to three-fingered swipes. Aren’t we just having so much fun?
To clarify: This only works if you have a multi-touch trackpad; if you’ve never used two fingers on your trackpad at once to scroll or anything, you probably don’t have one. Any Mac laptop from the last four years has at least two-finger gestures, so twisting should work.
[thanks to Rafael for the tip and original instructions]
Thanks… I had been using the betas for a while and it was there, then it was gone. Thanks for showing me how to get my twist back.
The 3-fingered swipe and twist are both great, although I’m liking the swipe best. Thanks for the tutorial!
Which one is for 3 fingered swipe?
The only swipes listed under Gesture search are
browser.gesture.swipe.left and
browser.gesture.swipe.right and the ups and downs.
Oh and on my macbook it is so akward to do a twist, how do you do it? Mines not doing anything o.O
Ditto, Alex. It’s not just you.
Running an early ‘08 MB, 10.5.7, FF3.5.
I just planted my thumb and swiped my index finger from left to right and it worked.
“Swipes” are three-fingered by default. You can’t really have a two-fingered swipe because two-fingers is reserved for “scrolling”.
^
There is no need to wait for each application to incorporate multi-tuch features…
You can just install MultiClutch and bind whatever guesture you might think in any application!
http://wcrawford.org/2008/02/28/everytime-i-think-about-you-i-touch-my-cell/
A must for macbook owners :)
wow. only macbooks nah.
Wow, great feature. But really, are multitouch monitors useful? I find them interesting, but wouldn’t buy one. The mouse is still better, by far.
Who said anything about multitouch monitors? This is for the MacBook Pro multitouch trackpad.
A multi-touch monitor should work too, though, if Mozilla has made the gestures loosely defined enough.
The tutorial? GREAT!! Sorry, but one of you can explain to me what is that of “a twisting motion with your fingers on a multi-touch surface”?? is it possible with the keyboard? how to use it. tks
Twist works by putting your two fingers next to each other so they’re touching, then keep one finger in place which moving the other around it. I find it a little awkward but maybe I’ll get used to it.
a bit easier is to start with one finger forward, and the other back, and move them past each other. It’s a bit easier than keeping one stationary.
Thanks for the how to by the way. Any tips for changing things? I find the pinch in and out for zoom annoying, but I’d like to change it to open and close new tabs.
Use:
cmd_newNavigatorTab
cmd_close
These will create and close a tab.
@Federico Imparatta Romero
… that’s why multi-touch on the Mac Book * line is all done on the larger track pad.
I agree about the notion of a multi-touch monitor being a bad idea. 1: I never want to reach and hold my arms out to operate a computer, not for any amount of time; 2: it’d have to be have that oleo coating the current iPhone has to avoid ugly smudgies.
i’ve been using these features for a long time in the betas… by far my favorite feature of 3.5. i set swipe up and down to previous and next tabs, and twist up and down to home and end. glad to know i can switch things around too.
If you give a crap about this you need to get a girlfriend.
And here you are commenting on it!
This will be a great browser feature to have especically when used with the upcoming Crunchpad.
By the way, since it’s officially July, can we PLEASE HAVE AN UPDATE on the current status of the CRUNCHPAD project?????
Thank You.
I agree with Alex. Someone answer please!
Which one is for 3 fingered swipe?
The only swipes listed under Gesture search are
browser.gesture.swipe.left and
browser.gesture.swipe.right and the ups and downs.
any idea why this wouldn’t work for me?
i have ff 3.5 on a new macbook pro. i entered the string exactly as described. i have even shut down and restarted ff, but the twist gesture doesn’t work.
is there some other config setting i need to switch?
I’m with Jacob.
Can’t find these preferences anywhere.
Agreed. I’m noticing that there are settings in the System Preferences–>Trackpad that already control this through the finder. So, the two-finger swipe already scrolls up&down, and left and right. I tried disabling gestures in the system preferences and it still won’t work in Firefox. Any idea how to get around this? Three-fingers isn’t working, and neither is the “twist” that you talk about. (But, that being said, if you’re only interested in scrolling and not switching tabs, you can enable that in system preferences. I’m running OSX 10.5.7.)
swipe left and right work fine for me, but twist does not, despite me changing the about:config settings as described above.
oddly enough, i was able to use the twist feature in an earlier beta build of FF, but they don’t work now.
what am i doing wrong?
Seriously.
I have multi-touch on my MBP, I can twist and zoom photos in Preview, but I can’t find these settings in FF.
WTF?
Multi-clutch….enough said
I too am unable to make any of these gestures work in FF 3.5 – Argh.
What do you look for or ‘add’ in order to support 3 finger gesturing? This is a great article, but it’s leaving a lot of us in the dark. Thanks!
A “swipe” is three-fingered by nature… The setting you’re looking for is:
browser.gesture.swipe.left
browser.gesture.swipe.right
By default you use a (three-fingered) “swipe” to do next/previous page.
twist? dont see it. clutch?
Is this for 10.5 and later only or does Tiger get some love too?
Thank you! I’ll give it a shot. *crossing fingers while swiping*
I’m still not able to activate the function. I’ve modified the gestures for swipe left and right to ‘Browser:NextTab’ and Browser:PrevTab’. Three fingers on my trackpad still does nothing. Sometimes it shows the contextual menu. hmmmf
I am on a 13″ MB white. Am I missing something? Usually I’m the one that is explaining the features to other people. This is quite humbling, I have to admit.
13″ White MacBook? I’m sorry, but those don’t have multitouch trackpads, just two finger scrolling.
This only works on MacBooks that have multitouch trackpads.
OH! Well, that makes sense. LOL – Thank you for settling that. HA HA HA!!! Alright, I’m making a list of the cool stuff I can’t yet do so I can justify my next Mac!
keep an eye on this guy’s work.
Is there a way to somehow “add” multi touch to my 2.33 core2duo mbp?
Sorry, but it’s a hardware issue. Your mbp doesn’t have the appropriate chip for multitouch.
To twist, I simply move one finger up and the other finger down and it worked.
Three-Fingered-Salute !!!
This article really needs to define what a ‘multi-touch surface is’ and how one might acquire it. If it this only applies to Macs, that should be clearly stated. I was completely lost as a I read this article until I realized it did not apply to me.
It is amazing!!!
Great article! Very excited to use the Swipe to switch tabs.
It is amazing!!!
Firefox more powerfull ..i like it .
i love swipeing. it’s very satisfying. swipe swipe
Cool! So I got this to work! But it doesn’t work every time, and it’s a tad glitchy. So what do I type in to do the 3 finger swipe? I think that would be a little more natural. And also, how exactly would speed up the response of the twist? Thanks!