Feature Request: Trackpad Gestures to Change Video and Show Hidden Overlays

[theoskye]

The various models of Apple TV Siri Remote(s) provide interactions to:

1. show the location info (overlay), and
2. navigate backward or forward between the available screensaver videos.

These interactions are detailed in Apple's end user documentation:

On the Siri Remote, do any of the following when the Aerial screen saver is active:

Find out what location you’re viewing: Tap the clickpad (second-generation Siri Remote) or touch surface (first-generation Siri Remote). In some screen savers, the location information changes with the viewing area so that specific landmarks are highlighted. Go backward or forward to a different location: Press left or right on the clickpad ring, or swipe left or right on the clickpad (second-generation Siri Remote); or swipe left or right on the touch surface (first-generation Siri Remote).

Feature Request: Perhaps Aerial could provide two new options to enable similar interactions on trackpad-equipped devices.

Option: Tap (not click) trackpad to show currently hidden overlays. (Related to #812)

• Note: If this option is enabled, tapping the the trackpad should not trigger a click event, even if "Tap to Click" is enabled in trackpad System Preferences
• Note: Overlay fade-out timing still applies after last tap on Trackpad
• Note: Click on trackpad would still "wake up" the device

Option: Swipe left or right on the trackpad to navigate backward or forward to a different video/location

• Note: Perhaps consider only intercepting multi-finger swipe gestures to avoid confusion for end users who are trying to "wake up" their Mac by swiping on the trackpad.
• OR perhaps better yet, provide the Aerial user additional options to specify specific swipe gesture(s) Aerial will intercept to navigate backward or forward to a different video/location: one-finger swipes, and/or two-finger swipes, and/or three-finger swipes

[glouel]

Hey @theoskye

So, long story short, Aerial used to be able to do this, but recent versions of macOS broke this. If you are using macOS High Sierra or earlier, you can press the right arrow key for example to skip a video. On more recent macOSes, that option is greyed out though (it's in the Advanced panel).

With macOS Catalina, Apple added some security stuff to sandbox screen savers. One big drawback to this is that Aerial can no longer access either the keyboard nor the mouse/trackpad.

I've had some radar open with Apple about this for a few years. To their credit they fixed some stuff, one BIG thing they fixed in Monterey is allowing (limited) access to external/network drives, so that's something at least.

But right now, Apple blocks all interactions from the user to the screensaver so I can't do anything about that.

Hope that sums up things.

[theoskye]

Hi @glouel! That all makes a lot of sense! Thanks a lot for sharing that history/background.