Mousetroke

Mouse gestures have long been a browser-extension feature. Mousetroke moves them to the operating system, so the same stroke works in a browser, File Explorer or any other window. Hold the right button and draw. Left is back, right is forward, down-then-right closes a tab, a box shape takes a screenshot, and a stroke plus a left click restores a closed tab. The gesture name appears near the bottom of the screen while you draw, and if the shape isn't recognized nothing runs. A quick right-click without dragging still opens the context menu as usual.

The homepage has a demo area where you can try strokes in the browser before downloading, which is a good way to see whether gestures suit your hands.

The second half of the tool needs no button at all. Push the pointer into a corner to open the Start menu, show the desktop or switch to the previous program. Scroll along the top edge to change the volume or along the bottom edge to change screen brightness, which also works on external monitors that support DDC/CI. Rubbing the right edge opens Task Manager. Leaving the corner and coming back is required before it fires again, so it doesn't repeat by accident.

Each gesture can trigger one of eight action types: a key combination, a window action, opening a program or URL, running a command, media and system controls, a pop-up menu, or a Lua script for multi-step logic. Variables like the selected text or the process ID under the cursor can be passed in, so a stroke can search the web for whatever you've highlighted.

Remote desktop clients, 3D tools and design software often use right- or middle-button dragging themselves. On first run, Mousetroke finds those programs on your machine and lets you switch gestures off inside them. The Mac beta turns gestures off by default in remote desktop, virtual machine and 3D apps such as Blender.

Mousetroke is free and MIT-licensed, with the source on GitHub. Version 0.2.2 is a 14.5 MB download for 64-bit Windows 10 (1809 or later) and 11. The Mac version is a beta for macOS 11 or later and isn't notarized yet, so macOS will ask you to approve it under Privacy & Security, and it needs Accessibility permission to work.