Glimble

A lightweight macOS menu-bar app that maps trackpad gestures to actions — snap windows, fire keyboard shortcuts, run scripts, launch apps. As powerful as the big gesture tools, but simple, with good defaults out of the box.

macOS 15 (Sequoia) and 26 (Tahoe), Apple Silicon. Built-in trackpad.

Install

Homebrew (recommended)

brew tap gum798/glimble
brew trust gum798/glimble        # Homebrew 5+ requires trusting third-party tap casks
brew install --cask glimble

Update later with brew update && brew upgrade --cask glimble.

Manual

Download Glimble-<version>.dmg from the latest release, open it, and drag Glimble to Applications.

First launch — allow it past Gatekeeper

Glimble is ad-hoc signed (not notarized — it uses a private Apple framework to read raw trackpad data, and notarization needs a paid Apple Developer account). On first launch macOS blocks it. To allow it:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Glimble.app"

…or open System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

Permissions

Glimble needs two permissions (it prompts and links you to the right panes):

• Input Monitoring — to read multi-finger trackpad gestures.
• Accessibility — to move windows and send keyboard shortcuts.

After granting Input Monitoring, relaunch Glimble.

Default gestures

Gesture	Action
3-finger tap	Maximize the focused window
4-finger tap	Center the focused window
3-finger swipe left	Snap window to the left half
3-finger swipe right	Snap window to the right half

Edit, add, or remove rules in Settings (menu-bar ▸ Settings…). The rule editor lets you set a trigger by performing the gesture (click Record, then do the gesture). Rules can be global or scoped to a specific app.

If a Glimble gesture also triggers a built-in macOS gesture, disable that one in System Settings ▸ Trackpad ▸ More Gestures so Glimble's rule wins — macOS gestures can't be suppressed from outside.

Build from source

swift build              # build
swift test               # run the GlimbleCore unit tests
swift run GlimbleApp     # run the menu-bar app

GLIMBLE_IDENTITY="-" ./scripts/build-app.sh    # assemble + ad-hoc sign Glimble.app
GLIMBLE_IDENTITY="-" ./scripts/release.sh      # package a .dmg

Requires the full Xcode toolchain (Swift 6+).

How it works

• GlimbleCore — a pure, unit-tested Swift library: the touch model, the gesture recognizer (multi-finger swipes/taps), the rule model, matching, and persistence. No OS or private-framework imports, so it's fully testable.
• GlimbleApp — the menu-bar app: reads raw multitouch via OpenMultitouchSupport, runs the engine, executes actions (CGEvent / Accessibility / Process), and hosts the SwiftUI settings + onboarding.

License

TBD.