Enable 2-finger swipe back/forward gesture in Firefox in Ubuntu

This simple tutorial shows how to use 2-finger touchpad gesture to go back and forward in Firefox web browser in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 22.10, Fedora 36/37 with default Wayland session.

Mozilla Firefox web browser recently fixed the 2-finger touch-pad gestures for Linux user with Wayland session. For those who want to try out this feature, here’s the step by step guide show you how.

Firefox 2-finger swipe to navigate back / forward

Besides navigation, this tutorial will also enable 2-finger spread to enlarge web pages in Firefox.

Firefox 2 finger spread gesture to enlarge web page

1. Enable Wayland support for Firefox

To enable the features, you just need to tell Firefox to run with Wayland enabled.

  1. For Ubuntu & Debian user, first open terminal either by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard for searching from ‘Activities’ overview.
  2. When terminal opens, run command to edit the ‘.profile‘ file:
    gedit ~/.profile
  3. When file opens, add the new line into the end:
    export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1

NOTE: for Ubuntu 22.10+, replace gedit with gnome-text-editor in the command.

  1. For Fedora, Rocky Linux user, open terminal and edit this file instead
    gedit .bash_profile
  2. And also add new export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 line to the end.

As well, if your system has switched to GNOME text editor, replace gedit in command with gnome-text-editor.

Step 2: Apply change

To apply the change, your have to just log out and login back. Then, launch Firefox and try out the gestures!

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