xGestures lives on: version 1.9.1

I have just finished a new version of xGestures, available as always at the following link: https://briankendall.net/xGestures/download.htm

There aren't any new features in this build, though there are a number of important fixes. Several of you reported to me that xGestures was crashing every time your macOS Ventura systems woke up from sleeping. That should now be fixed. Technically, this is one of those "how did it ever not crash" bugs so this may fix crashes in earlier versions of macOS too.

I also added a little advanced settings button with a toggle that changes how xGestures filters out mouse events. This setting is specifically there to make xGestures work with SteerMouse.

There's a few other little fixes at well that I won't repeat here since it's in the change log.

edit on November 17: I forgot to notarize xGestures before I released it! 😖 But I've since fixed it and re-uploaded it. Hopefully that didn't give so many of you any issues.

Hark! A new version of xGestures, version 1.9.0

Not wanting it to languish for too long, and also wanting to deal with the many emails I've gotten from users asking about xGestures crashing regularly, I've gone ahead and made a new version.

As always, you can download it here: https://briankendall.net/xGestures/download.htm

As mentioned, there are a few crashes that this version fixes. It also automatically removes the quarantine flag from itself after installation, so hopefully the info in the previous blog post will no longer be necessary. And it's now a universal binary! Well, actually, xGestures is old enough that this is the second time it's become a universal binary. Last time it was PowerPC and Intel. This time it's Intel and Apple Silicon.

But... this version also adds a new feature! This is one that I should have added a long, long time ago. It's a simple check box in the "Options" tab that reads: Bring window to front when using keystroke or menu item actions

It's fairly straight forward: if you perform a gesture that's assigned an action for typing a keystroke or picking a menu item, xGestures will bring whichever window that'll receive the action to the front before executing it. The reason is simple: windows that aren't in the front can't receive keystrokes and apps that aren't frontmost can't have their menus picked.

This is mainly intended to be used with the "Window under the start of the gesture determines the application" feature. Before now, if you performed a gesture over a window that wasn't frontmost, any keystroke xGestures types would go to the wrong window, or even the wrong application! And if the gesture was meant to pick a menu item, it would just flat out fail.

So, if you have "Window under the start of the gesture determines the application" enabled, you totally want to also enable "Bring window to front when using keystroke or menu item actions". It doesn't get turned on by default because I staunchly believe that minor application updates should not cause their behavior to change, and this way no one gets caught off guard. But nonetheless you want that enabled.

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.