The Swipe Gesture is the most popular gesture in Windows, as it allows the users to perform different operations while browsing the internet. Apple made the trackpads multi-touch feature even more amazing. Windows 10 also provides native support for precision touchpads and now comes up with two, three and four finger swipe gestures. There are various pre-configurations for swipe gestures. All you need to use a swipe gesture to switch between multiple applications as well as virtual desktops and minimize all the windows.
The three-finger swipe is not preconfigured, you need to manually configure that for going forward or backward. But before that, you need to check whether you have a precision touchpad or not.
Checking for Precision Touchpad
The three-finger swipe only works with the precision touchpad, to check that if you have, open settings app and go to the device group of settings and choose Touchpad tab. If you have a precision touchpad you will see a message “Your PC has a precision touchpad” at the very top of the screen. If you don’t see the message and the settings is a normal tab then you have an ordinary touchpad and you cannot disable the scrolling direction.
In case you have a precision touchpad, you can easily configure the three-finger swipe. All you need is to have a few things in mind.
This gesture works only with the browser having a keyboard shortcut to go back and forward. In case you have multiple browsers, make sure that all of them have the same shortcuts. Also, changing this configuration will change the configuration of the entire system.
Configuring the Three-Finger Swipe for Browser Navigation
All you need is to go to the Device group of settings and choose Touchpad tab, on the right side, you will find ‘Advanced Gesture Configuration’.
In Advanced Gesture Screen, you will be able to customize three and four finger gestures. Under the section ‘Configure your three finger gesture’, find the left option and the drop down, by default is set to Switch apps.
Open the drop-down and choose ‘Custom Shortcut’ from options. It will provide an option i.e. to record a keyboard shortcut i.e. mapped to three fingers left swipe gesture.
Click the Start recording button and type the browser’s keyboard shortcut to go back. As for chrome, the back keyboard shortcut is Alt + Left arrow key. Click the Stop Recording button after entering the keyboard shortcut.
Repeat the steps for the Right gesture and the shortcut for the browser will be recorded for the mouse gesture from Alt + Right.
Resetting the Swipe Gestures
If you are not satisfied by the performance of the touchpad gestures, you can also reset them in a convenient way. All you need is to scroll to the end of the Touchpad tab and click the Reset option to reset all the swipe gestures to the default settings. Thus, changing the settings to default will also change the right and left swipe gestures to default.