Enable horizontal scrolling in Ubuntu

Question

There is no option in Mouse & Touchpad Settings to enable horizontal scrolling in Ubuntu 13.04+ (Raring/Saucy/Trusty) (GNOME 3.8+):

Mouse & Touchpad Settings

No horizontal scrolling even by enabling two finger scroll or content sticks to fingers.

How is it possible?

score 66 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

66

There’s a way through dconf Editor; so:

open dconf Editor through the Dash;
go to org > gnome > settings-daemon > peripherals > touchpad;
check horiz-scroll-enabled, as you see in the screenshot.

Enable horizontal scrolling

Edit: Dconf Editor was pre-installed on 13.04, where I first faced the problem; but on 13.10 and 14.04 it’s easier to use gsettings, see Samuel Cavazos’s answer.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

Community

1

answered Mar 05 '13 at 01:06

AliNajafies

5,874

12

Thank you! I still don't understand the reason for removing that option from the control panel :/ – mid_kid Apr 16 '13 at 21:09
4

Yeah, me too. Seems it’s about GNOME project, where functionality is sacrificed for simplicity! – AliNajafies Apr 17 '13 at 19:10
1

At least they don't make it impossible ;) – mid_kid Apr 23 '13 at 15:37
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This is a moment when I wish stackoverflow framework permitted multiple upvotes ;) thanks – lu1s Jul 23 '13 at 08:23
@AliNa I aproved an edit that compliments your findings. – Braiam Oct 19 '13 at 21:35
excellent answer to also disable horizontal scrolling, or sideways scrolling (pushing some keywords here). – three Jan 01 '14 at 11:34
3

What if there is no touchpad key? FYI: My laptop gots touchpad. v16.04 – Waldemar Wosiński Jan 20 '17 at 11:34
In 16.04, i think they place the touchpad setting in other place, try use dconf Editor, browse to org - gnome - desktop - peripherals - touchpad, all the touchpad setting is here. – stanleyhunk Jan 19 '18 at 08:08

score 30 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 28 '13 at 09:42

30

Alternative way: run this in your command line

synclient HorizTwoFingerScroll=1

answered Aug 28 '13 at 09:42

nebirhos

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Does it enable edge scrolling too if I’ve disabled two-finger scrolling? – AliNajafies Aug 29 '13 at 15:45
I think edge scrolling is controlled by other options: VertEdgeScroll and HorizEdgeScroll – Dmitry Pashkevich Jan 18 '14 at 15:55
4

Neither dconf editor nor gsettings worked for me on Lubuntu 14.04, but this one did: synclient HorizEdgeScroll=1 – iynque Mar 06 '15 at 03:08
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@iynque Works on Xubuntu 16.04 as well. How do you make this permanent? – sanwablo Dec 18 '16 at 11:17
I am on Lubuntu 17.04 and i got an error message stating: Couldn't find synaptics properties. No synaptics driver loaded?. – kiltek Oct 23 '17 at 06:11
Anyone know how to make this persistent between boots? I added the command to startup applications, but I feel like this is a bad way to do it – Calixte Nov 08 '17 at 15:41
This enabled it for touch pad only, not the mouse scroll button, in Ubuntu 16.04 – SaidbakR Nov 13 '17 at 17:31
Works like a charm in DeepIN 15.9 – Ruvenss Feb 04 '19 at 08:25
@Calixte Add it to Startup Applications (in the menu), or to /etc/rc.local. – datashaman Mar 01 '19 at 09:03

score 22 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 15 '13 at 07:41

22

Or just run

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad horiz-scroll-enabled "true"

in a terminal

edited Aug 15 '13 at 07:41

Kevin Bowen

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answered Aug 15 '13 at 05:06

Samuel Cavazos

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This trick also works great if you have the opposite goal: turning the horizontal scroll off. Just set the variable to “false” instead of “true”. – Bryson S. May 08 '15 at 00:45
It said to set the value of the key. Nothing happened. – dustbindiva Jul 05 '16 at 18:39
Ran gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad horiz-scroll-enabled "true" in Terminal, nothing happened. – dustbindiva Jul 05 '16 at 23:33
5

$ gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad horiz-scroll-enabled "true"

No such schema 'org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad'

– Ondra Žižka Feb 15 '17 at 21:56
The command probably doesn't work anymore. Ubuntu has change over the years since I posted this and I've switched over to another distro. – Samuel Cavazos May 12 '17 at 16:00
2

I am on Lubuntu 17.04 and also got the No such schema 'org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad' message. – kiltek Oct 23 '17 at 06:09

Ondra Žižka · Answer 4 · 2024-01-30T11:27:11.420

9

Configure your Linux key binding to make Shift+Mouse wheel send an horizontal scroll event:

Install xbindkeys xautomation

Edit ~/.xbindkeysrc.scm and write:

  ; bind shift + vertical scroll to horizontal scroll events
  (xbindkey '(shift "b:4") "xte 'mouseclick 6'")
  (xbindkey '(shift "b:5") "xte 'mouseclick 7'")

Run xbindkeys.

Also, for Firefox 17+, open about:config and set:

general.autoScroll = true
mousewheel.with_shift.action = 1
mousewheel.with_shift.action.override_x=1 if on Firefox >= 121 (see the comment)
Optionally, configure scroll speed: mousewheel.with_shift.delta_multiplier_x = 300

Source: https://coderwall.com/p/xnez3g/horizontal-scroll-with-mouse-under-linux

I got both working. Although for xbindkeys, some apps stick with their own behavior, for instance Firefox.

edited Jan 30 '24 at 11:27

answered Feb 15 '17 at 22:01

Ondra Žižka

3,738

This is fantastic, thank you sooo much, you're the best. – zwolin Sep 24 '18 at 18:54
1

works for me on ubuntu 23.04 – Ľubomír Mlích Jul 03 '23 at 14:18
stopped working after upgrade to 23.10 :-( – Ľubomír Mlích Nov 13 '23 at 10:07
the problem with 23.10 is only with firefox and can be fixed by setting mousewheel.with_shift.action = 4 source of knowledge: https://support.mozilla.org/zu/questions/1358257 – Ľubomír Mlích Nov 24 '23 at 08:03
after upgrade of Firefox to 121 (wayland is default instead of X), I needed to set also mousewheel.with_shift.action.override_x=1 and then scrolling started to work again – Ľubomír Mlích Dec 20 '23 at 18:45

Azendale · Answer 5 · 2020-04-17T14:59:14.863

4

On the MATE desktop variant, I found the following dconf path to work:

/org/mate/desktop/peripherals/touchpad/horizontal-two-finger-scrolling

If you do not already have the dconf-editor, you will want to run sudo apt install dconf-editor

Start dconf-editor and then search for "horizontal-two" and that should be specific enough to find it:

I'm using a laptop with a Synaptics touchpad running Ubuntu (MATE) 18.04.

Yonn Trimoreau says that on Cinnamon, the following dconf path should work:

/org/cinnamon/settings-daemon/peripherals/touchpad/horizontal-scrolling

You would install the same dconf-editor, but search for "horizontal-scrolling" and then set it to on.

edited Apr 17 '20 at 14:59

answered Jul 13 '19 at 15:09

Azendale

11,891

2

sudo apt install dconf-editor – jperelli Aug 06 '19 at 14:25
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On Cinnamon: org.cinnamon.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad.horizontal-scrolling – Yonn Trimoreau Apr 15 '20 at 16:40
@YonnTrimoreau took the liberty of editing my answer to include your note. Feel free to edit my answer if you see anything that needs changing or could be improved. – Azendale Apr 17 '20 at 15:00
Working great on Cinnamon 20.1, upon closing dconf-editor Firefox immediately started scrolling horizontally. Baffles me why the default isn't True. – Henrique de Sousa Jun 07 '21 at 00:40

Enable horizontal scrolling in Ubuntu

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