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 Some pages may still be incomplete, outdated, or change as WebLibre develops.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.

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. Turn on Enable Gestures

You can also toggle gestures from the browser menu’s quick toggles. Long-press that toggle to jump straight to the gesture settings.

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.

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 — Back, Forward, Reload

  • Tabs — New Tab, Close Tab, Duplicate Tab, Next Tab, Previous Tab, Last Used Tab, Pin / Unpin Tab

  • Page — Reader Mode, Desktop Site, Translate, Find in Page, Bookmark, Increase Font, Decrease Font

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

  • Open — Bookmarks, History

  • App actions such as Minimize and Quit

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.

  • 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.

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

Related Pages