Firefox Touchpad Gestures: Back, Forward, and Pinch-to-Zoom

This article provides a quick overview of the native two-finger touchpad gestures supported in the Mozilla Firefox web browser. It covers how to execute back and forward page navigation using horizontal swipes, how to use the two-finger pinch-to-zoom feature to scale web content, and how to verify or adjust these gesture settings within Firefox's advanced configuration menu across Windows, macOS, and Linux systems.

Back and Forward Navigation

Firefox supports horizontal two-finger swipes to navigate through your tab's browsing history. When you perform these gestures, a small arrow icon appears on the edge of the browser window to confirm the action.

  • Go Back: Place two fingers slightly apart on the touchpad and slide them horizontally to the left. This loads the previous page in your browsing history.
  • Go Forward: Place two fingers slightly apart on the touchpad and slide them horizontally to the right. This moves you forward to the page you were on before going back.

Note: If you have "Natural Scrolling" or inverted scroll directions enabled in your operating system settings, the swipe directions for back and forward may be reversed.

Pinch-to-Zoom

Firefox supports smooth pinching gestures that scale the viewport, similar to zooming in and out on a smartphone screen. Unlike standard page zooming (which reflows text), pinch-to-zoom magnifies the page directly.

  • Zoom In: Place two fingers together on the touchpad and spread them apart.
  • Zoom Out: Place two fingers apart on the touchpad and pinch them together.

Platform Requirements

For these gestures to work out of the box, your system must meet specific requirements:

  • Windows: Requires a laptop or external trackpad that supports Windows Precision Touchpad drivers (standard on most modern Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices).
  • macOS: Supported natively on all Apple Magic Trackpads and MacBook built-in trackpads.
  • Linux: Supported natively when running Firefox on the Wayland display server, or on X11 with XInput2 enabled.

Enabling or Fixing Gestures in Firefox

If your hardware supports multi-touch gestures but they are not working in Firefox, you can manually enable them using the browser's configuration editor.

  1. Open Firefox, type about:config into the address bar, and press Enter.
  2. Click Accept the Risk and Continue.
  3. To ensure pinch-to-zoom is active, type apz.allow_zooming into the search bar. Make sure the value is set to true. If it is set to false, double-click it to change it.
  4. To check the back gesture, search for browser.gesture.swipe.left. Ensure the value is set to Browser:BackOrBackDuplicate.
  5. To check the forward gesture, search for browser.gesture.swipe.right. Ensure the value is set to Browser:ForwardOrForwardDuplicate.
  6. Restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.