tomcooke.me.uk

Swipe to Click

This program is at a fairly no-frills level at the moment - it’s a work in progress. Your feedback could make it better!

If you’re here because you find pressing the mouse buttons uncomfortable you might also be interested in Cursory which allows you to use the keyboard instead.

What is Swipe to Click?

Swipe to Click makes it possible to use the mouse without pressing the buttons. It does this by providing a pop-up selector from which a mouse action can be chosen. The action will then be executed once the pointer is stationary for one second. The pointer can then be moved in order to execute the action again in a different location, or left in the same place for a further second in order to cancel repeated clicking.

The program is intended for Windows XP or later, but you may be able to get it to work on older versions of Windows by downloading the free library gdiplus.dll from Microsoft and copying the file into the same directory as the Swipe to Click files.

Why would I want to do that?

You might be interested if:

• You find clicking uncomfortable
• You want to slow down your computer use a bit and make it more relaxed and deliberate
• Your wife is trying to watch the TV and the clicking from your mouse is bugging her
• You like trying new UI things

Where can I download it?

Click on this download link. You’ll need to unzip the archive somewhere before running SwipeToClick.exe.

When the tooltip shaped like a square cross appears, that indicates that the selector will be displayed when the pointer is stationary. The image above shows what you’ll see when the selector appears. In this situation, you can:

• Leave the pointer on “Hide” (the hollow rectangle in the centre) for one second to hide the window
• Swipe off “Hide” and back on it to select the “Hide” action (X icon), which allows the pointer to be moved to another location without the selector being shown – useful when you need to see a tooltip from another program
• Swipe the mouse pointer out to the left to select the left click action (left arrow icon)
• Swipe out to the right for a right click (right arrow icon), followed by a left click (left arrow icon)
• Swipe up to select the drag action (up indicates that the next action is drag start/pick up, down arrow indicates next action is drag stop/put down)
• Swipe down to select the double click action (double left arrow)

Note that you don’t need to hit the icon when swiping out - the whole border is active.

A tooltip will appear showing the selected action. Once it has been executed, the next action will appear filled in white, indicating that this action will only be executed if the pointer is moved, and that if the pointer is not moved within one second, no further action will be taken until the selector is accessed again.

There are options to change the delays for showing the selector and executing an action, at present these can only be changed by manually editing the SwipeToClick.ini file. You will need to restart Swipe to Click after making any changes to this file.

You can temporarily disable or re-enable the program by clicking on its taskbar icon. Right clicking on the icon shows a menu which provides an option to have the program run on startup (this setting is user-specific). Unfortunately, Swipe to Click becomes temporarily inactive when its taskbar menu is shown, so you’ll need to use buttons or keys to select things from it.

General advice

When using Swipe to Click, decide what you want to do before you put your hand on the mouse. Take your hand off the mouse when it is in the right place to complete the current action. Don’t worry about keeping the mouse pointer moving in order to avoid losing the autorepeat, it’s easy enough to pop the selector back up again.

Known Issues

Currently none, except that there is no UI for changing settings.

I want something like this, but this is not it!

Do a search for “Dwell Clicker”, you’ll find some alternatives.

Disclaimer

I do not claim to know anything about RSI or any other medical condition.

Contact

I can be contacted as tomcooke@fastmail.fm. I would welcome any feedback about this program, good or bad. If you know of any better alternatives I would be interested to hear about them. The chances of Swipe to Click getting a bit more polish will definitely be higher if some interest is expressed.