Nov 11
I picked up my Apple Magic Mouse a couple weeks ago, and I am totally in love with it. However, most of the programs I regularly use for web development don’t take advantage of the two-finger swipe gesture. Luckily, Firefox includes support for gestures that let me set up my mouse to switch tabs with the left/right swipe!
How to Do It
- Open Firefox.
- Type “about:config” into the address bar. After a warning about voiding your warranty (on a free open source product), screwing up your browser, and/or creating a wrinkle in the space/time continuum, this will bring up the Firefox configuration options.
- Use the filter box to search for “gesture.swipe” and you should see the results below.
- Double-click on the values for “browser.gesture.swipe.left” and “browser.gesture.swipe.right” and change them to “Browser:PrevTab” and “Browser:NextTab” respectively.
- Resume browsing as usual and enjoy your new tab-swiping functionality!
MUCH better than the default back/forward swipe functionality!
UPDATE (12/14/09): If you are interested in doing much more with your Mighty Mouse than this, you might want to check out BetterTouchTool, a utility for adjusting all sorts of gestures for both the MacBook touch pad and the Mighty Mouse (they have good taste in WP theme also)!
18 Responses to “Use Magic Mouse Swipe to Switch Tabs in Firefox”
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November 13th, 2009 at 4:35 am
Thanks but my swipe left does not work. It’s really weird, cannot explain it. Swipe right works fine, I checked syntax and everything and also verified that swipe left works with iPhoto so am at a loss.
Did anyone else have this problem?
Thanks
Andrew
November 20th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Go go gadget Magic Mouse! If you have one set up the left/right swipe to go between tabs in FF: http://bit.ly/2dZltr
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 24th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Yes Andrew, I have the same problem here. Right swipe works just fine to go to next tab, but left swipe no longer does anything (used to go backwards with no problems before).
Mark
November 24th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Typo . “Broswer:PrevTab” – that’s what you get from cutting and pasting. Read what you type.
November 25th, 2009 at 1:17 am
[...] love the Magic Mouse if your browser of choice is Firefox. Why? Two words: Tab switching. With a simple hack, you can switch back and forth between tabs using the two-finger swipe gesture. That means [...]
November 25th, 2009 at 7:02 am
[...] love the Magic Mouse if your browser of choice is Firefox. Why? Two words: Tab switching. With a simple hack, you can switch back and forth between tabs using the two-finger swipe gesture. That means [...]
November 25th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Cool hack for my Magic Mouse: http://www.kevinpfefferle.com/2009/11/11/use-magic-mouse-swipe-to-switch-tabs-in-firefox/
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 25th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Firefox config hack: use Apple Magic Mouse swipe gesture to tab-switch. http://bit.ly/2RqoH9 Pure, unadulterated browsing awesomeness.
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 25th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Use Magic Mouse Swipe to Switch Tabs in Firefox | http://bit.ly/2dZltr | FTMFWBBQOMLHiPFTS
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 25th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Use Magic Mouse Swipe to Switch Tabs in Firefox http://ow.ly/FCZi — Easy change in about:config to make your Magic Mouse even more magical!
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 25th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Switch tabs with the magic mouse: http://www.kevinpfefferle.com/2009/11/11/use-magic-mouse-swipe-to-switch-tabs-in-firefox/
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 27th, 2009 at 12:50 am
Terrific, thanks a lot!
November 27th, 2009 at 8:32 am
Apple Magic Mouse – How to use double finger swiping to scroll through tabs in firefox – http://tinyurl.com/yjenohq
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 27th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
[...] Filed under: OSX, Technology — 0ddn1x @ 2009-11-27 21:17:45 +0000 http://www.kevinpfefferle.com/2009/11/11/use-magic-mouse-swipe-to-switch-tabs-in-firefox/ Leave a Comment TrackBack [...]
November 30th, 2009 at 4:49 am
@thebai Instructions are here: http://www.kevinpfefferle.com/2009/11/11/use-magic-mouse-swipe-to-switch-tabs-in-firefox/
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
December 6th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Mine has broken completely. Won’t scroll through tabs and when I change it back it no longer scrolls through tab history
December 30th, 2009 at 6:19 am
Awesome modification! Thanks for the walkthrough.
February 22nd, 2010 at 9:16 am
It did work for me. I thought it was great. No for some reason it stopped working…
I still have the same configuration…
Is there anyone with same problem? Or someone who can help me with this?