Exploring New Windows Touch Based Gestures

[pranavhippargi]

Summary Microsoft is considering introducing additional touch-based gestures in Windows to make it easier for users to complete a variety of tasks using touch. We would like your feedback regarding how this work would impact your application.

Rationale

The introduction of a variety of new touch gestures into Windows would be intended to accelerate common & important tasks for customers. The greatest customer benefit will come if these gestures are consistent & learnable across the operating system. However, this could potentially create application compatibility issues for gestures within your app because gestures which require more than two fingers will be routed to the OS instead of the application.

We would like to know how this proposed OS feature would impact your application if the application already uses more than two fingers for gestures. While we have a generic proposal in mind, we are looking into alternatives.

Scope

If implemented, any touch-screen gesture that consists of more than two fingers will be routed to the OS by default and applications that rely on three-or-more finger gestures will not receive that input in the default configuration.

Additionally, this would be the default behavior for Windows devices (shipping as On by Default), though we will allow users to turn off the OS gesture in Settings. If the setting is turned off the if the application uses more than two fingers for a gesture, the contacts will be routed to the application directly.

Our current design proposal is that applications will not have the ability to programmatically turn off the Global User Setting to allow users to be in control of their Settings and their experience on Windows. However, since we want to maintain application compatibility, we are exploring different pathways to maintain application compatibility for apps on Windows which uses more than two fingers to trigger a gesture. One example is to provide applications the ability to query for the setting and prompt the user to navigate to settings and change it.

Open Questions Does your application currently use gestures that consist of three or more touch points? If yes, • What kind of application / experience does this provide? • How would this change in the default behavior impact your application? • Would a global user setting be adequate or would you want your individual app to be able to Opt-in to an app-specific override that would allow your application to receive this class of gesture input when being used? • Do you have any other feedback regarding this proposed feature?

[JaiganeshKumaran]

@pranavhippargi How about bringing back the charms bar?

[Poopooracoocoo]

related: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/4999

[benstevens48]

It seems like a bad idea not to provide the ability for individual apps to opt-in to receive such gestures or override the behavior somehow. It wouldn't affect my app personally, but what about something like a virtual piano keyboard app? You wouldn't want the user to have to go to turn off a global setting every time they want to use the app, then go back and turn it on again afterwards. That would be a terrible user experience.

[massijay]

In my opinion Windows gestures should be heavily inspired by other OSes (iOS) gestures system that showed to be working well and users are familiar with

[ismaelestalayo]

Although i'm not such a heavy multitasking user when using the touchscreen vs the mouse+keyboard, gestures to change between the virtual desktops (like the 3 finger gesture on the trackpad), and the multitasking/task view swiping up with 3-4 fingers on the trackpad should be a must

[nerocui]

Three finger to grab a window. Four finger horizontal swipe to switch virtual desktop. Four finger swipe up to see task view. Four finger swipe down to show desktop. Swipe in from the bottom left to open Start.

Like how trackpad gestures are customizable, the touch gestures should be too.

Options can be

Open screen snip tool Bring up Start Open search Open Cortana Open select app Execute certain key combination Enter task view

[Agredo]

@nerocui better first the tablet mode getting gestures like @massijay said. Many are already familiar with this gestures and the tablet mode is crap in W10 because there are no gestures anymore.

[WindowsTablet]

First of all, Windows tablet mode needs to be drastically improved with portrait orientation top/bottom snapping which Android and ChromeOS have, and with slide-overs and a notion of virtual desktops like iPadOS and Samsung Galaxy Tab Android. See the following YouTube examples for what we need:

https://youtu.be/WenSw2d1LFE

https://youtu.be/af2BRLm1gT8

https://youtu.be/TXd2Rhs2mEc?t=228

See more tablet issues here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/hf5394/when_is_microsoft_going_to_fix_tablet_mode/fvw0csb/

As for touch gestures, take a look at what GestureSign has done:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/ehc9yv/best_surface_apps_and_tools_2019_edition/fcig037/

[Panda-Sharp]

Here there is what I miss on my 2in1 that don't have physicals volume buttons, have small bezels and I my task bar is set to auto hide:

1. No easy way to make the task bar appear, when I move the finger from the bottom of the screen up, the task bar appears 1/10 times, would be nice a global gesture to show the start menu (4/5 fingers tap?)
2. No easy way to change the volume, I have to make the task bar appear (see point 1), I have to tap on show hidden icons (I hide all the system tray icons), I have to tap on the small volume icon and than I can change it, also here would be nice a global gesture (4/5 fingers tap and scroll up/down)
3. swipe between opened apps. like alt+tab, could be or 4/5 finger and scroll right/left, or from the edge right/left like windows 8

[vurso]

How about combining the cam for sign users and disgruntled old developers who like to two finger salute their code when it fails (a lot)

[Arlodotexe]

There's an app called TouchMe Gesture Studio that allows you to create custom gestures on Windows 10. One of my favourites was being able to pinch with 3 or 4 fingers, and rotate like a knob to adjust the volume.

For the remaining gestures, Windows 8 on tablets got a LOT right, and inspiration should absolutely be taken from there.

[FireCubeStudios]

i think the animation should be connected to the finger. when i swipe right from side to open action center the animation doesnt follow my finger and feels weird compared to ios where when its swiped it follows your finger

[lukeblevins]

With our app scenario, there is browser-like reliance on back/forward navigation. However, users who rely on touch input report that having to tap a tiny button in our UI is not suitable. That's why (among other reasons) touch-based gestures at a system-level are very much worth it. Windows 8 was ahead of its time in this respect.

I'd assume handling any swipe gesture for backward navigation would rely on the existing WinRT SystemNavigationManager API. But depending on the number of gestures introduced that developers will be allowed to handle, it may be preferrable to have them all in one place elsewhere.

Looking forward to hearing more about how this will evolve the Windows experience.

[JaiganeshKumaran]

@duke7553 In Windows 8, swipe from the left was for going back to the previous app, not as an in-app back button. It will confuse users since swiping from the left now brings up task view. In Windows 10 Tablet mode, the back button is for both current app and previous app if current apps doesn't handle the event. It could be like short swipe from left will do back button action and long swipe will open up task view and the current back button can be hidden.

[JaiganeshKumaran]

Today it is not possible to switch between apps easily with touch. While you can use Alt+Tab, there needs to be a touch gesture for cycling between apps instead of swiping from left just going to task view. Maybe swiping from the left side could initially show the previous app and holding it back could show the task view for a full list.

Later if you hold it back full list of apps can be shown (Windows + Tab shortcut and pressing the task view button should open the task view as current behavior):

This will be tricky in desktop mode since app windows are floating window and they can behind instead of minimized so Windows should find a way to determine the user actually sees that window instead of just adding minimized apps to the switch list.

[god-boat]

Please fix windows touch, we don't want to have to rely on 3rd party apps (gesturesign)