What the? A blog post! xGestures and macOS 11.5.2 (and Monterey)

Hello everybody!

I've been getting a lot of emails from people about how xGestures stops working after updating the macOS 11.5.2 (and also Monterey). It seems that Apple has once again changed something subtle about how the various security thingamajigs in the system operate, and the upshot here is that anyone who installed the xGestures pref pane in such a way that it still has the "quarantine" flag on it will find that the pref pane can no longer launch xGestures itself.

Without any further ado, here is the fix:

1. Open Terminal (or your favorite terminal app like iTerm2)

2. Execute the following commands (note that they should each be a single line even though the blog post may break it into two):

xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine ~/Library/PreferencePanes/xGestures.prefPane

xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine /Library/PreferencePanes/xGestures.prefPane 

(One of the two of those should do it, depending on whether you installed xGestures for all users or just the current user account.) 

3. Try relaunching xGestures

At some point I'll release a new version of xGestures that addresses this issue. I've also recently discovered and fixed a crash that was introduced in version 1.80, so I definitely owe you all a new version with that fix. I'll try to make it a proper universal app too so that it doesn't need to run in Rosetta on an Apple Silicon mac.

Even though I still don't have a lot of time to work on xGestures, I'll go ahead and reaffirm that I intend to keep it working going into the future so long as there is still no other mouse gesture app that works as well as it does. And even with it being as old and somewhat kludgy as it is, so far there isn't.

xGestures 1.80 is up

xGestures 1.80 is now out of beta and available for download here: https://www.briankendall.net/xGestures/download.htm

I wouldn't be surprised if there were still more bugs to fix, particularly in Catalina. But for the time being I think it's good to go. I'll try to keep fixing any more bugs I find!

New 64-bit beta build of xGestures

For the few of you still following this blog, I've been working on a new update to xGestures. It's 64-bit and intended to be Catalina compatible. I've also fixed a number of long-time bugs that have been festering for a while, like the "Uninstall" button not working, an application's list of gestures getting annoyingly mixed up and out of order, and there not being separate actions for zooming a window and making it full screen. I've fixed a number of crashes too, though I suspect there's still plenty more lurking around in there somewhere.

This build is most of the way done, but I haven't tested it extensively in Catalina yet. Please shoot me an email if you try it out and encounter a bug!

Here's a link (version 1.80b3):
https://nextcloud.briankendall.net/index.php/s/WYGSs8iyqso2zHD

64-bit xGestures and macOS 10.15

I've received a few emails wondering about the future of xGestures and macOS 10.15, which will no longer support 32-bit apps at all. The good news is that I am working on a 64-bit version of xGestures! The trouble is that, since I originally wrote xGestures in 2004, a lot of it used old 32-bit Carbon APIs that are no longer supported, so a bunch of the app has to be re-written.

I do have an in-progress 64-bit version for those you want to try it out. Here's a link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rrkfsy3jhesyh7u/xgestures-179b1.zip?dl=0

The one feature that's missing is visual feedback when gesturing. I'm going to try and reimplement it before 10.15 comes out.

I've found that it seems to work better in 10.14 than version 1.78.

If however xGestures is currently working fine for you, then there's no reason to update.

Oh yeah, blogs. Remember those?

Does anyone even still use blogs anymore? Maybe I should share a tweet about my latest tumblr post on Facebook for all of my Slack friends.

Anyway, I made a new version of xGestures: 1.78. It fixes a bug that made mouse clicks unreliable in macOS 10.13. 😱 If you're running High Sierra, I recommend updating! It fixes a few other things too.

I hope people are still finding xGestures useful like I am. I've said it before, but just to reaffirm, I do intend to keep updating it as long as I'm using a mac and no one makes a suitable alternative. Because, you know, I can't live without mouse gestures.

xGestures is now freeware and updated for macOS 10.12

Well, here we are... another blog post nearly two years after my last one. Sufficed to say that I haven't really had the time to maintain this blog, as I've been completely absorbed in my work and personal life for the last decade or so. But I do have some new news.

First, I've updated xGestures to version 1.77. The update should fix some bugs that come up in macOS 10.12, namely that it was impossible to install the software, and it should make it easier to make xGestures one of the apps that's allowed to control your computer.

Second, xGestures is now freeware. Given that I don't have the time to update it any longer, almost no one is buying it anymore (I've been getting one registration every two weeks or so), and also given that it only costed five dollars, I figured the right thing to do was to make it freeware from here on out.

I'd like to take this moment to thank everyone that paid $5 for xGestures over the years.

🎈🎉🎊🎈 Thank you! 🎈🎉🎊🎈

You all helped support me, particularly towards the beginning of xGestures' life when I was still in the sketchy early years of my adulthood, back around the time I was still in college or recently graduated, and I was more or less broke. I originally made xGestures just for myself and my own sanity, since prior to xGestures there wasn't any good mouse gestures app for macOS / OS X / Mac OS X / whatever, and I simply couldn't live without mouse gestures. It was very encouraging for me to see so many other people fall in love with xGestures and find it to be the same indispensable tool that I do.

Without any further ado, here is the link to xGestures 1.77: xgestures177.dmg

So that leaves a big question... what's next for xGestures? The rather sad answer is, not much.

As long as there isn't another mouse gestures app for macOS that's as good as xGestures, I will continue to update it for the latest version of macOS. It is an indispensable tool for me, after all, so if it should stop working, I'll pretty much have no choice but to fix it. But as of now, I have no plans for adding in any new features.

I had a dream some time ago of making a new version of xGestures, completely rewritten from the ground up to be something even better and more powerful than it was before. But these days, my time is very valuable, and I don't have the time to work on a big project like that alongside everything else that's earning me money. xGestures was always a niche utility, and in the age of Magic Trackpads it's even more niche than it was before, making it not viable as a commercial product. Maybe some day I'll find the time and inclination to make a freeware (or perhaps even open source) brand spankin' new mouse gestures app, but that's not happening in the foreseeable future.

(I'd just like to throw in that BetterTouchTool may be a suitable replacement, although I don't personally feel that its drawing feature is quite the right replacement for the Opera-style mouse gestures that xGestures provides. But it's close! You may like it, and all of the other great features it provides.)

I'm not dead, and neither is xGestures!

Hello to the few people that read this!

Sorry I've been completely neglecting my website and xGestures. I have a lot of other stuff on my plate these days, not the least of which is the paid work I'm doing, so after all is said and done I have almost no free time and energy to continue working on xGestures.

That said, I still use it and rely on it every day, so I won't let it completely waste away. If you're a dedicated user of xGestures, you can take some solace knowing that I can't live without it either, so if it totally breaks, I'll have no choice but to fix it or risk being driven to madness by a world bereft of mouse gestures.

Concerning OS X 10.10 Yosemite: xGestures *does* work in it, if you perform some steps to make it allowed to use OS X's accessibility features, which most of the gesture actions require. Here's how to do it:

1. Find the xGestures.prefpane file (located in either ~/Library/PreferencePanes or /Library/PreferencePanes)
2. Right click and pick "Show package contents"
3. Open Contents / Resources
4. Next open System Preferences / Security & Privacy
5. Pick Privacy tab
6. Select Accessibility
7. Click lock, enter an admin password
8. Drag xGestures.app from the Resources folder onto the list of applications in the Accessibility section
9. Make sure the checkbox next to it is checked
10. If xGestures is already listed in the Accessibility section and it's still not working, try removing xGestures from the list and adding it again.

I've also started working on a new version that fixes this bug, but half of the users I sent it to said it doesn't fix it, so I still have more work to do. Hopefully at some point soon I'll actually be able to release it.