Enable horizontal scrolling in Ubuntu

Question

There is no option in Mouse & Touchpad Settings to enable horizontal scrolling in Ubuntu 13.04+ (Raring/Saucy/Trusty) (GNOME 3.8+):

No horizontal scrolling even by enabling two finger scroll or content sticks to fingers.

How is it possible?

Answer 1

There’s a way through dconf Editor; so:

1. open dconf Editor through the Dash;
2. go to org > gnome > settings-daemon > peripherals > touchpad;
3. check horiz-scroll-enabled, as you see in the screenshot.

Edit: Dconf Editor was pre-installed on 13.04, where I first faced the problem; but on 13.10 and 14.04 it’s easier to use gsettings, see Samuel Cavazos’s answer.

Answer 2

Alternative way: run this in your command line

synclient HorizTwoFingerScroll=1

Answer 3

Or just run

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad horiz-scroll-enabled "true"

in a terminal

Answer 4

Configure your Linux key binding to make Shift+Mouse wheel send an horizontal scroll event:

• Install xbindkeys xautomation

• Edit ~/.xbindkeysrc.scm and write:

    ; bind shift + vertical scroll to horizontal scroll events
    (xbindkey '(shift "b:4") "xte 'mouseclick 6'")
    (xbindkey '(shift "b:5") "xte 'mouseclick 7'")
  

Run xbindkeys.

Also, for Firefox 17+, open about:config and set:

• general.autoScroll = true
• mousewheel.with_shift.action = 1
• mousewheel.with_shift.action.override_x=1 if on Firefox >= 121 (see the comment)
• Optionally, configure scroll speed: mousewheel.with_shift.delta_multiplier_x = 300

Source: https://coderwall.com/p/xnez3g/horizontal-scroll-with-mouse-under-linux

I got both working. Although for xbindkeys, some apps stick with their own behavior, for instance Firefox.

Answer 5

On the MATE desktop variant, I found the following dconf path to work:

/org/mate/desktop/peripherals/touchpad/horizontal-two-finger-scrolling

If you do not already have the dconf-editor, you will want to run sudo apt install dconf-editor

Start dconf-editor and then search for "horizontal-two" and that should be specific enough to find it:

I'm using a laptop with a Synaptics touchpad running Ubuntu (MATE) 18.04.

Yonn Trimoreau says that on Cinnamon, the following dconf path should work:

/org/cinnamon/settings-daemon/peripherals/touchpad/horizontal-scrolling

You would install the same dconf-editor, but search for "horizontal-scrolling" and then set it to on.