Preview: These docs are available early so you can start using them now. Some pages may still be incomplete, outdated, or change as WebLibre develops.

Gestures

WebLibre includes a configurable gesture system. You draw a stroke pattern on a web page — for example down-right, or up — and WebLibre triggers the action you bound to that pattern. Tab-bar and tab-overview swipes are configured separately on the same settings screen.

Gestures are useful when you want quick access to actions such as going back, closing a tab, or scrolling to the top, without reaching for the toolbar or the menu.

Gestures are off by default.

Turn Gestures On

  1. Open Settings > Gestures

  2. Under Web Pages, turn on Drawn gestures

You can also toggle gestures from the browser menu’s quick toggles. Long-press that toggle to jump straight to the gesture settings. The Gestures action turns drawn gestures on or off too, so you can assign it to a toolbar long press or a keyboard shortcut.

Create a Gesture

  1. Open Settings > Gestures > Gesture bindings

  2. Tap Add gesture

  3. Draw a stroke pattern in the drawing area

  4. Choose the target action

  5. Save the gesture

You can also pick where the gesture may start, and how many fingers it uses. Search the action picker by name, description, or related terms to find an action. Existing bindings can be edited or removed, and Restore default gestures resets the whole set.

If the stroke pattern is already assigned to another action, WebLibre warns you and asks before replacing the existing binding.

Available Actions

Actions are grouped by category, including:

  • Navigation — Address Bar, Scan QR Code, Voice Search, Back, Forward, Reload, Hard Reload

  • Scrolling — Scroll to Top, Scroll to Bottom, Page Up, Page Down

  • Tabs — New Tab, New Private Tab, Close Tab, Reopen Closed Tab, Duplicate Tab, Next Tab, Previous Tab, Last Used Tab, Pin / Unpin Tab, moving tabs, and next or previous container

  • Page — Reader Mode, Desktop Site, Find in Page, Text Size, Add bookmark, Quick bookmark, Share, Translate, Print, Copy Link, Site Settings, and Add to Home Screen

  • Open — the browser menu, Home, History, Bookmarks, Containers, Tab View, Downloads, Add-ons, Settings, Keyboard Shortcuts, and other browser screens

  • Create — shortcuts for creating a container, bookmark folder, feed, search shortcut, profile, or proxy profile

  • App — Hide / Show Tab Bar, Gestures, Clear Browsing Data, Minimize, Back Up Profile, and Quit

The same actions are used for keyboard shortcuts and toolbar long presses, but each place keeps its own assignments. QR scans and voice searches put the result in the search field so you can review it before opening a page or searching.

Add bookmark opens the bookmark editor; Quick bookmark saves or removes the current page immediately. Existing Bookmark gesture assignments now use the editor. Reassign them to Quick bookmark for the old one-step behavior.

Tab and Tab Bar Swipes

The top of Settings > Gestures lists swipes made outside web pages. Each one is bound to a browser action that you can change, or set to Do nothing.

Tab Bar Swipes apply to the tab bar or the side rail:

  • Swipe left along the bar and Swipe right along the bar — on the side rail, swiping up or down does the same. By default they follow your earlier tab-bar swipe choice: Last Used Tab, or Previous Tab and Next Tab.

  • Swipe toward the screen edge — hides or shows the tab bar by default.

  • Swipe away from the screen edge — opens the tab view by default.

Tab View Swipes apply to a tab in the list or grid. Swipe a tab left and Swipe a tab right close the tab by default. They act on the swiped tab, not the open one, so only tab-related actions are offered: close, add or quick bookmark, share, pin, duplicate, or move to the start or end.

In the tab view, a two-finger swipe always switches to the next or previous container, and a pinch switches between grid, list, and tree layouts. These two are built in and cannot be changed.

To undo your swipe changes, open the screen’s menu and choose Reset Swipes to Defaults. Drawn gestures are not affected.

If you had custom drawn-gesture bindings before updating to v0.40.0, review them under Gesture bindings. Some older assignments may need to be recreated. Existing tab-bar swipe preferences are preserved.

The Toolbar section links to Long press on buttons, which you set per button when customizing the toolbar. See Toolbar & Layout.

Behavior & Timing

Open Settings > Gestures > Behavior & timing to tune how strokes are recognized:

  • Minimum stroke length — the minimum swipe length recognized as a direction

  • Timeout — drops a stroke if no new direction is drawn within this time

  • Cooldown — the minimum delay between two gestures firing

  • Stroke interval — rejects a gesture when direction changes come too fast, guarding against accidental triggers from jittery finger movements

If gestures trigger accidentally while you scroll, increase the minimum stroke length or the stroke interval. If your gestures often get cut off, increase the timeout.

You can restore all of these with Reset to defaults.

Live Feedback

Under Settings > Gestures > Feedback, you can control what appears while you draw:

  • Live feedback — shows the stroke and its matching action while you draw

  • Suggest next — also shows the other gestures you can still complete from the current stroke

  • Suggest after — how many strokes you draw before suggestions appear

The overlay makes it much easier to learn your own gesture set, so keep it on at least while you get used to the feature.

Excluded Sites

Some sites use their own touch or drawing interactions — maps, drawing tools, or games. You can disable gestures for those sites under Settings > Gestures > Excluded sites.

Subdomains are included automatically, so excluding example.com also covers maps.example.com.

What to Expect

  • Gestures only work on web page content, not on the browser’s own screens.

  • In the tab overview, a two-finger swipe switches containers and a pinch changes the tab layout. These do not require a custom stroke binding.

  • Pull-to-refresh is suppressed while you draw gesture strokes near the top of a page, so the two features do not fight each other. The Web Pages section of Settings > Gestures also has a Pull to refresh switch.

  • If a page behaves oddly with gestures enabled, add it to Excluded sites instead of turning the whole feature off.

Related Pages