Fix touchpad scroll gesture on GNOME 49

[Thesola10]

This fixes #1092 by adding the AppDisplay SwipeTracker to the list of trackers to incapacitate, as per @cg505's investigation. Please try and report back!

[grota]

mmh I patched manually patches.js adding the line in this PR but it does not solve the issue for me

[Fringale]

I confirm the change to patches.js fixes the issue on my side, I don't need the workaround anymore!
(but then again the behavior on my system seemed a bit different from what others had, what with the empty Applications overview?)

Thanks a lot for the fix @Thesola10, and @cg505 for the investigation!

---

System information:

Distribution: Aeon
GNOME Shell: 49.1
Display server: Wayland
PaperWM version: 49.0.0
Enabled extensions:
- paperwm@paperwm.github.com

[cg505]

This doesn't seem to work for me. Maybe the appDisplay swipeTracker doesn't exist yet at the time of setupSwipeTrackers?
Happy to add some debug info but not sure what would help

[grota]

I tried the following scenario:

• disabled all extensions
• reset (clear out) my dconf settings for paperwm dconf reset -f /org/gnome/shell/extensions/paperwm/
• enabled only paperwm

but it still does not work.

Distribution: Arch Linux
GNOME Shell: 49.1
Display server: Wayland
PaperWM version: 49.0.0
Enabled extensions:
- paperwm@paperwm.github.com

[enzuru]

There seem to be many variations of the same issue, so to clarify mine: my issue specifically is that PaperWM's horizontal scroll of windows (achieved via a horizontal three finger gesture) is jerky, janky, slow, and effectively unusable.

This patch fixed the bug for me after applying it and logging in and out, but inconsistently. Sometimes it works well, sometimes the old janky behavior begins to return.

If I had to guess, there is an additional swipe tracker we have to disabled that is only periodically available.

I will try to play with the patch tomorrow to see if I can get it to permanently work.

[chromakode]

This appears to be an inconsistent fix for me as well. It now works on startup (and my applications icon grid in the overview is no longer empty), but sometimes after opening the overview my 3 finger swipe stops or starts working again.

---

Distribution: Ubuntu 25.10 (Questing Quokka)
GNOME Shell: 49.0
Display server: Wayland
PaperWM version: 49.0.0
Enabled extensions:
- batime@martin.zurowietz.de
- paperwm@paperwm.github.com
- system-monitor@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
- ubuntu-appindicators@ubuntu.com
- gsconnect@andyholmes.github.io
- snapd-prompting@canonical.com

[Vortex375]

The fix is not working for me.

As an experiment I added this to setupSwipeTrackers():

GObject.signal_handlers_disconnect_matched(Main?.overview?._overview?._controls?._appDisplay?._swipeTracker, {signalId:'end'})

In an attempt to permanently disable the swipe tracker and suppress the entire code path that causes the issue.

This definitely did something, as it "sucessfully" broke swiping in the actual app grid. However, the three-finger swipe in PaperWM is still not working, and I am still seeing this stack trace:

JS ERROR: TypeError: can't access property "children", this._pages[pageIndex] is undefined
  getItemsAtPage@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/iconGrid.js:922:17
  getItemsAtPage@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/iconGrid.js:1440:30
  _translatePreviousPageIcons@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/appDisplay.js:314:34
  _syncPageIndicators@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/appDisplay.js:387:14
  goToPage@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/appDisplay.js:436:14
  goToPage@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/appDisplay.js:1250:29
  onComplete@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/appDisplay.js:731:36
  _makeEaseCallback/<@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/environment.js:68:13
  _easeActorProperty@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/environment.js:225:17
  St.Adjustment.prototype.ease@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/environment.js:311:23
  _swipeEnd@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/appDisplay.js:728:20
  _endGesture@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/swipeTracker.js:650:14
  _endTouchpadGesture@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/swipeTracker.js:671:14
  _handleEvent@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/swipeTracker.js:196:18
  @resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/init.js:21:20

This is puzzling, because I disconnected the signal that calls _swipeEnd, and it seems like it actually is no longer called when interacting with the actual app grid ... then why is this error still getting thrown?

It's almost like there is a second instance of this appDisplay floating around ...

[thyttan]

It seems this will soon be resolved at gnome-shell level:

Just to let you guy know, the GNOME bug has been fixed in this commit. Now we just need to wait for GNOME to push out next release (probably in 2 weeks time) and probably another week or 2 for some distribution to update. After that, it should be easy sailing for me, hopefully.

Originally posted by @HieuTNg in HieuTNg/touchpad-gesture-customization #22