[Documentation] How to disable the desktop switching gesture

[BeeFox-sys]

In the settings menu, there is this line: "Enable scrolling with touchpad gestures (please don't forget to disable KDE's workspace switching gestures)"

However i can find zero information of how to do that, nor find the setting in the kde settings. Since it is a needed thing but something seemingly hard to work out how to do, Some documentation would be amazing!

if im just missing something definitely tell me though!

[BeeFox-sys]

Worked it out, you have to add rows to your virtual desktops if you want to keep them, and then have one per row.

[peterfajdiga]

@lavafroth Is there a more straightforward way to disable KDE's workspace switching gestures than rearranging virtual desktops into rows?

[lavafroth]

I'm not aware of any other way. The gestures seem to be hardcoded. I'll look into QDBus and let you know if I find anything.

[AndydeCleyre]

This is not a more straightforward way, but another path is to use the X11 session, which I think doesn't have the kwin gestures at all (?), then assign karousel gestures via libinput-gestures.

[lavafroth]

Update: As of now, the gestures for desktop switching is hardcoded in the KWin codebase. The only way to disable them is to patch and rebuild KWin.

[peterfajdiga]

Thank you for checking. Do you think it would be a good idea to use 4 fingers for the Karousel gesture or would that still clash with something?

[BeeFox-sys]

I don't think it clashes but i also feel that gestures over 3 fingers can become unwieldy

[omentic]

I think someone is working on fixing gestures, by the way. No idea how long it will take. https://blogs.kde.org/2025/06/12/gesture-customization-mini-sprint/

(my personal preference if gestures were customizable would be three fingers for karousel, four fingers for workspaces)

[heddxh]

I made a patch for KWin on AUR/kwin-without-gestures, it completely removed gesture-related code for workaround.