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Touch and pen

Input.Observer doesn't support touch or pen input. It doesn't recognize finger strokes, multi-finger gestures or pen buttons. It reacts to mouse buttons, the mouse wheel and the keyboard.

When touch or pen works anyway​

When the program under your finger or pen doesn't handle touch or pen input itself, Windows turns compatible input into the matching mouse input for that program. Input.Observer sees that mouse input like any other: a pen tip pressed on such a program acts as the left mouse button. Whether and how Windows does this depends on the program and on your device, so it isn't something to rely on.

If you do want to draw gestures with a pen this way, add Left button to Draw buttons on the General page, as that row's description suggests for pens and tablets with no separate secondary button. The left button is the one you click with all the time, so with it as a draw button:

  • A tap or click that doesn't move is passed on as a normal click.
  • A drag is a gesture. A drag that matches no action does nothing, so dragging to select text or move a window no longer works directly. Hold still for the Cancel timeout (Ending a gesture card on the General page; default 500 ms) before you drag: the press is then passed on and the drag works as usual.
  • Hold an ignored modifier key to make one press an ordinary click or drag, and use ignore groups and exclusion zones for programs and screen areas where the left button should always work normally.

See Drawing a gesture for how a press becomes a gesture or a click.