Swipe between workspaces
inside the COSMIC overview.

On Pop!_OS a 3- or 4-finger touchpad swipe switches workspaces, but does nothing while the workspace overview (Super+W) is open. This patch makes the overview follow your fingers, like Mission Control on macOS: the workspaces slide with you and land on the one you aim for. It installs without sudo and leaves your system packages alone.

Install Source on GitHub Releases

Pop!_OS 24.04 · COSMIC Touchpad, 3 or 4 fingers No sudo Magic Mouse with MouseTouch GPL-3.0

The COSMIC workspace overview following a touchpad swipe from one workspace to the next — The overview open with Super+W: a swipe slides the workspaces under the fingers and settles on the next one.

What changes

Only the workspace overview. Outside it, COSMIC keeps handling the swipe exactly as before.

Follows your fingers

1:1, live

Pause and it pauses; go back and it goes back. Fast and slow swipes cover the same distance per workspace.

Lands where you aim

Release velocity

A flick moves on to the next workspace, a slow drag settles on the nearest one, and a long fast swipe can skip several.

Both layouts

Horizontal or vertical

Swipe along the axis COSMIC lays your workspaces out on, in the same direction as its own swipe.

First ↔ last

Wraparound like COSMIC

Past the last workspace comes the first one when COSMIC wraps around; otherwise it stops with a little bounce.

Magic Mouse too

With MouseTouch

Two-finger swipes on an Apple Magic Mouse work inside the overview as well, through MouseTouch.

Safe to try

One command to remove

Nothing in /usr changes. After a system update with no matching build, COSMIC simply starts its own overview again.

Install

For Pop!_OS 24.04 with COSMIC, x86_64 or ARM. The patched overview has to match your exact COSMIC version, so the installer picks the build for the version you have, checks it and refuses if there is none.

1. Check your COSMIC version

dpkg-query -W cosmic-workspaces

Version shown	Revision	Status
`1.0.12~1790783807~24.04~cb953ea`	`cb953ea`	Supported (latest COSMIC at the time of writing)
`0.1.0~1765315332~24.04~954a45c`	`954a45c`	Supported (earlier COSMIC release)

The last part of the version, after the final ~, is the revision. If yours is not listed, the installer stops without changing anything; see Help.

2. Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Devace-93/cosmic-overview-swipe/main/get.sh | sh

Downloads the build for your revision from the latest release and verifies its SHA-256 checksum.
Puts it in ~/.local/opt/overview-swipe/ and adds a small wrapper at ~/.local/bin/cosmic-workspaces, which COSMIC starts instead of the system overview.
Restarts the overview. If it says your session does not look in ~/.local/bin yet, log out and back in once.

3. Use it

Press Super+W (or click Workspaces in the panel), then swipe with 3 or 4 fingers on the touchpad.

After a system update

When Pop!_OS updates COSMIC to a new revision, the wrapper notices and starts the stock overview, so nothing breaks; the swipe is just off. Run the install line again: it fetches the build for the new revision as soon as there is one.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Devace-93/cosmic-overview-swipe/main/get.sh | sh -s status

Remove

Deletes the wrapper and the downloaded build and restarts the stock overview. Your settings file is kept.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Devace-93/cosmic-overview-swipe/main/get.sh | sh -s uninstall

Build it yourself

Prefer to compile? The repository has the patch series per revision and a script that clones upstream at your revision, applies them and builds (needs Rust and a few -dev packages, about ten minutes).

git clone https://github.com/Devace-93/cosmic-overview-swipe
cd cosmic-overview-swipe
scripts/overview-swipe.sh deps    # build dependencies (sudo apt)
scripts/overview-swipe.sh build   # upstream at your revision + patches
scripts/overview-swipe.sh try     # same wrapper as the installer; undo: untry

Settings

Optional. The installer creates ~/.config/cosmic-overview-swipe.env with the settings commented out. Edit it, then restart the overview:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Devace-93/cosmic-overview-swipe/main/get.sh | sh -s restart

# finger travel (mm) per workspace; higher = slower. Default 20.
COSMIC_WORKSPACES_SWIPE_MM=35

# earlier COSMIC (954a45c) only: stop at the first/last workspace
# instead of wrapping around. Newer COSMIC follows its own setting.
COSMIC_WORKSPACES_SWIPE_WRAP=0

The swipe direction follows COSMIC's natural scrolling setting for the touchpad, the same as its swipe outside the overview.

How it works

While the overview is open, COSMIC's compositor stops switching workspaces itself and hands the touchpad swipe to the overview, which until now did not listen. The patch adds that part to cosmic-workspaces, the program that draws the overview.

Receive the swipe

The overview subscribes to touchpad swipe gestures from the compositor.

Measure real finger travel

Pointer acceleration is undone, so the distance per workspace does not depend on how fast you swipe.

Slide the workspaces

The windows of the neighbouring workspaces are captured ahead of time, so they slide in fully drawn.

Settle and switch

A spring animation carries the release velocity to the target, then the overview asks COSMIC to switch to it.

Why is this not in COSMIC? It is not submitted to System76 for now, so it is distributed here: prebuilt for the exact COSMIC versions it was tested on, with the source and patches in the repository. The series also fixes an overview crash with windows on several workspaces.

Troubleshooting

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Devace-93/cosmic-overview-swipe/main/get.sh | sh -s status
journalctl --user -b | grep -i cosmic_workspaces

Symptom	Check
"No build for cosmic-workspaces …"	Your COSMIC revision is newer or older than the releases. Nothing was changed. Watch the releases, or open an issue with the output of `dpkg-query -W cosmic-workspaces`.
Swiping in the overview does nothing	Run `status`. "Build for this revision: no" means COSMIC was updated: run the install line again. If the stock overview is running, log out and back in once.
Too fast or too slow	Set `COSMIC_WORKSPACES_SWIPE_MM` (default 20; 30–40 feels calmer on some touchpads) and run `restart`.
Goes the wrong way	It follows the touchpad natural scrolling setting in COSMIC Settings, like COSMIC's own swipe.
Magic Mouse swipes do nothing	Install MouseTouch 0.1.13 or newer, which follows COSMIC's horizontal or vertical layout.
I want the stock overview back	Run `uninstall`. Nothing else on the system was touched.

Details, the patch series and test notes are in the repository. Questions or another COSMIC version: issues.

Swipe between workspacesinside the COSMIC overview.