Python Touchscreen Right Click

This project implements right click functionality using a touchscreen on an Ubuntu system using the Python evdev library. Because of unity's deep integration with multitouch gestures, it disallows many other systems from implementing basic gestures that (IMHO) are missing from the default multitouch gestures. This script will not override unity's gestures, but fill in some missing ones, working alongside unity's multitouch system. (Also tested in gnome-shell given gnome-shell's incomplete implementation of right click touch)

Implemented gestures

Two gesture options have been implemented for right click:

• 1 finger longpress
  • Standard operation is to open menu after finger is lifted.
  • Temporary workaround will bring up right click while still pressing
• 2 finger tap

Setting up script

Install requirements (python evdev). Will work in either Python 2.7 or 3.4+ *tested. This has been tested on Ubuntu 14.04, 15.04, & 16.04 with an ELAN/Atmel touchscreen on Lenovo Yoga 2 pro, and Surface Pro 2.

To modify the delay for your right click, open the script in a text editor and modify the self.click_delay variable, the default is 1.5 seconds.

To use the long press workaround, set that option to True. To use PyMouse for event input instead of UInput (the default UInput method doesn't work for all hardware/OS setups, and the PyMouse option can result in displaced right clicks in some environments when the window of interest is not the primary focus), set that option to True. Default is False for both.

In order to launch the script at startup, the rc.local method may or may not work. Using systemd, you can setup a service. The service can be setup as follows to call a shell script:

The shell script should contain something like:

#!/bin/sh
python3 /(path to python script...)/Python_Touchscreen_RightClick.py

The service can be set up as follows:

[Unit]
Description=script to appropriately set right click via touch
Documentation=none

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/(sheel script from above...)

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

You can attempt to still use the rc.local method, mileage may vary...

Edit /etc/rc.local file to include launching this script.

cd /etc/dclick/
sudo python test.py
cd -
echo `date +%Y-%b-%d_%H:%M:%S` > /tmp/ran_rc_local

exit 0

Please note that in order to access the input device for the touchscreen, you will need sudo to run the scipt.