Background
Apple holds US 8,239,784, which patents the three-finger downward swipe mapped to application expose. To avoid that mapping, we assign three-finger swipe down to workspace grid: an overview of all open windows across all workspaces. We are publishing this mapping as prior art so no entity, including IronTree Software LLC, can later claim exclusive rights over it.
This publication is narrow by design. It covers one mapping. Additional gesture mappings may be published separately as they are designed and settled.
The Mapping
| Gesture | Action |
|---|---|
| Three-finger swipe down | Show workspace grid (overview of all open windows) |
Direction principle: Downward gestures navigate into context. A three-finger swipe down reveals the full workspace grid, all open windows across all workspaces, so the user can orient and navigate. This is the spatial inverse of Apple's three-finger swipe up for Mission Control, and is deliberately distinct from Apple's three-finger swipe down for application expose (US 8,239,784).
Technical Implementation
Recognition pipeline:
Raw touch events (libinput/evdev)
→ Contact tracking (finger count, position, velocity)
→ Gesture classification (swipe direction)
→ Action dispatch (via compositor action bus)
A gesture is classified by the dominant axis of movement in the first 15 to 25 pixels of travel. If the vertical component exceeds the horizontal by a ratio of at least 1.5:1, the gesture is vertical. Finger count is locked at the moment of first classification. Fingers removed mid-gesture abort it.
The mapping is user-reconfigurable. The default described here is the shipped vocabulary; users may remap or disable it. The mapping is data, not hardwired behavior.
Differentiation from Existing Patents
| Patent | Claims | This mapping |
|---|---|---|
| US 8,239,784 | Three-finger downward swipe → application expose | Three-finger downward swipe → workspace grid (different action) |
| US 8,255,832 | Three-finger upward swipe → window overview | Three-finger downward swipe → workspace grid (opposite direction) |
Prior Art References
- Linux libinput library (2014–present): configurable multi-touch gesture detection for arbitrary finger counts and directions.
- GNOME 40+ (2021): configurable three-finger horizontal swipe for workspace switching.
- KDE Plasma 5.27+ (2023): configurable multi-finger gesture support for desktop navigation.
- Synaptics Gesture Suite (2009): configurable three-finger flick gestures shipped on Windows laptops from Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others.
- US 7,479,949 (Jobs et al., filed 2006): acknowledges that "touch screen gesture recognition systems are known in the art."
The novel contribution here is not gesture recognition but the specific mapping of three-finger downward swipe to workspace grid as a distinct, publicly documented, unencumbered pairing.
Intended Public Use
This mapping is published for unrestricted use by any operating system, desktop environment, window manager, compositor, or input framework. It is not asserted as proprietary. IronTree Software LLC ships it as the default in LibreWin and makes no exclusive claim over it.