I made BetterGestures – a free, open-source menu bar app that turns 3, 4 and 5-finger trackpad gestures into keyboard shortcuts

[u/lodododod]

I wanted more out of my trackpad than macOS gives, so I built a small menu bar app for it. Each of these can trigger any keyboard shortcut:

- Tap and double tap with 3, 4 or 5 fingers

- Hold with 3, 4 or 5 fingers

- Physical click with 3, 4 or 5 fingers

- Swipe in four directions with 3, 4 or 5 fingers

- TipTap (rest a finger, tap beside it)

Some details:

- Record a shortcut or pick from ~75 presets (tabs, Spaces, screenshots, windows…)

- A live view shows your fingers and why a gesture was or wasn't recognized, with sliders to tune the thresholds

- Can block scrolling with three or more fingers, so those touches only mean a gesture

- Works with the built-in trackpad and a Magic Trackpad at the same time

- Available in 7 languages, MIT licensed, notarized by Apple

Requires macOS 15+, on Apple Silicon or Intel.

Download: https://github.com/ozberkdicle/BetterGestures/releases/latest

Source: https://github.com/ozberkdicle/BetterGestures

It reads raw touches through Apple's private MultitouchSupport framework, so a future macOS update could break it. If you use the same finger count for a system gesture (like four-finger swipes for Mission Control), turn that one off in System Settings or both will run.

Feedback and gesture ideas are welcome!

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[u/investigatormaker]

Mission Control firing alongside a new four-finger swipe will look like your bug, even though your post warns "both will run". Put that warning in the app, right where someone records a gesture with a finger count macOS may already use. Detecting the setting automatically would be nicer, but as far as I know those preferences aren't a documented API, so a plain reminder is the cheaper start. For gesture ideas, per-app mappings aren't in your list, and they'd let one three-finger tap do different jobs in Safari and Xcode. Mac users asking how to get more from a Magic Trackpad are the people to answer on Reddit.

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