handform.net :: design + technology

gMote 1.4

posted Friday 9th January 2009 @ pm by Craig

Hi everybody!

gMote is now at 1.4, and it has some features that many of you requested. First among these is the "keystrokes" function. You're no longer restricted to gestures that carry out simple actions involving one simulated key combination - you can input a series of them along with any other text.

This involves using a very simple script. An example is "[ctrl:ab]". If you assign this to a gesture, then drawing it will trigger the Ctrl key, followed by "a" and "b" and then the release of the Ctrl key. The result in a word processor is that all text is selected and made bold. Another example is "username{tab}password{enter}". This would fill in a log-in form (not recommended if you share your computer though, as gMote gestures are very easy to see and modify!).

There are a bunch of other bug-fixes and new features, I hope you enjoy finding them.

PS. There were a few issues after the initial update which have now been fixed. These were that gestures could only bring up an Explorer window, and a crash when assigning a gesture to launch a program or website. Fixed! Download again =).

Go get it.

what people are saying

bar kokhbaFriday 9th January 2009 @ pm

love ur software. amazing work so far and iam very thankful. only problem i have had so far is that i cant navigate back and forth in explorer.exe. i set a gesture to key combination alt + left but in explorer windows it often (not always, but alot) doesnt do anything... like it just ignores command. kinda makes navigating a hard drive a pain... do u have any ideas on how to fix? ty in advance and u really are doing a wonderful job

AndréSaturday 10th January 2009 @ am

yeah! sounds good! but where is your forum? i thought it was nearly done! have fun! andré

AnastasiySaturday 10th January 2009 @ pm

thanks for the update! But it still has a bug. When gMote is enabled, press&hold feature on the tablet stops to work.

joshThursday 15th January 2009 @ pm

I have no issues with the new version, but in the past few versions, middle-clicking in firefox is often-times not recognized. I have gestures set to the middle button (scroll wheel), and middle-clicking on a link in firefox opens it in a new tab. I'd say that 3/4 of the time the first middle-click is not recognized. temporarily disabling gmote restores normal function. This is especially problematic on netvibes.com. Does anyone else have this issue?

Rick Astley >_> fake email...Friday 16th January 2009 @ pm

Beautiful site design, GUI etc, Mr McMahon. Thanks for the Vista compatible gMote. Search box for the site would be welcome. And I'm glad a forum is in the works. Also, ROCKER GESTURES OWN MY SOUL! - Gesture recording is done with the LEFT mouse button, and there is no indication of this fact on your site and the readme file - whichever you decide to use, please inform the end user. I spent 5~ minutes getting "Gesture not recognised" trying to record gestures with the right mouse button. - An "include" list would be welcome for those who just want it for very few applications. - Is it just me or is gesture recognition a little too precise? I suppose it's needed if you have to detect a bleedin huge "S", but I just want to draw right-up and it coughs up a "gesture not recognised". Perhaps a direction-only detection scheme for those wanting simplicity? I won't waste time requesting features, since there are plenty of other mouse gesture programs with insanely advanced features that you can rip off. I'm sure you already intend to implement some of the above, so just take what you can from my comments.

ntSunday 18th January 2009 @ am

Hi I gave Gmote a test on win 7 and it worked well. Except for the menus going a bit wonky when the display is set to 125% in the control panel. But still very usable. In keystrokes can you add an option to delay for x seconds and a hold for x seconds. Also the start/win button is missing. Can you tell me how you enter ctrl + alt + y into keystrokes correctly.

Dual Monitors problemSunday 18th January 2009 @ pm

i use dual monitors and if i disable one and then re-enable it all while gmote is running, gmote starts erroring out whenever i do a gesture with "incorrect parameters" i have to restart gmote completely for it to work again

Rick Astley >_> fake email...Monday 19th January 2009 @ pm

Method for entering keystrokes to be executed could be more user friendly. Perhaps buttons to click which would automatically generate the required syntax a la the key combination option? I thought that was fine. On another note, I spotted an ad on this site which leads to malware.... "X-ray scanner NOW for your mobile!" Also, gMote does not seem to have documentation about its licence... Anyway, good day.

CraigTuesday 20th January 2009 @ am

Seems [ctrl:[alt:y]] doesn't work as expected - interesting! In fact, none of the ctrl+alt's work, but ctrl+shift does. I'll look into it. Delay and hold are good ideas. "Mr. Astley", I was thinking about buttons for this, but in the end I couldn't figure out a metaphor that would be simple to use but not limit the wide variety of combinations. Sorry about the ad - actually the ads make zero income, so I'll probably remove them. Aaargh dual monitors! I'll look into it... Rocker gestures... maybe...

JnZMonday 2nd February 2009 @ pm

Nice program, I notice small bug: I want to use gMote in Visual Studio 2008 for navigate back and forward, but, when I add VS2008 to known programs, I can't pop-out any context manu in VS (I use right mouse + drag for gestures in gMote). Setting "Enable timeout" don't work.

CamillMonday 2nd February 2009 @ pm

It would be really useful to minimise and maximise a window by one gesture. Windows have one button to do this, why I need use two?

CamillMonday 2nd February 2009 @ pm

And start minimized/start maximized option for "launch program". I like start explorer at full desktop.

CamillMonday 2nd February 2009 @ pm

Very often gMote does not recognise the same gesture drawn with different speed. For example, I draw diagonal downw-left line sometimes evenly, sometimes with acceleration, sometimes with deceleration, and the program recognises them as different gestures. BTW, I used Symbol Commander earlier, but it does not work with Windows 7. I really liked gMote and I would like to help to make it better.

64bit supportWednesday 4th February 2009 @ pm

Excellent program, but the Exclusion list doesn't seem to work for 64bit apps. 10 recent programs do not show 64bit apps and do not work when manually added to the list.

BradySunday 8th February 2009 @ am

I absolutely love the program and use it primarily for my media player.. which gives me one problem- all the media player function work except for play/pause, and no matter what I do I cannot make it work. Suggestions?

AlexMonday 9th February 2009 @ am

Great program! Just wanted to report a few issues: 1. crash at computer start when "always run at startup" is enabled. As a workaround I turned it off and put the shortcut to the "Startup" folder. 2. the focus is lost after I closed a window by a gesture (it's supposed to move to the next window in the stack). If I want to quikly close 2 (or more) windows, I can't just make several gestures at once, I have to left-click each window before I draw a gesture. 3. If I have a small window and start my gesture outside of the window, the focus is also lost. This seems to be related to #2. Nice music, very calm and relaxing, wish you have more time and write more... :)

AlexWednesday 11th February 2009 @ am

Well, the workaround for issue #1 I mentioned in the previous post does not work - gMote is still crashing on startup.

CraigThursday 12th February 2009 @ am

I believe the issue is now fixed, and will be in the next update =) Hopefully will get that out there today or tomorrow!

JnZTuesday 17th February 2009 @ am

Just tested 1.41, but still not working with Visual Studio. I want use gmote with right mouse and drag, and if I set such configuration, then click right mouse anywhere in VS, no context menu show-up. But anyway nice program. Thanks

STudyTraY-UserMonday 23rd February 2009 @ am

Hello, thank you for your fine gMote gestures software. I like it very much, but I have a few suggestions: Is it possible to have more than 100 gestures in a single profile? It would also be nice if the gesture recognizer could take tablet pressure into account, for example with a "soft" stroke I delete a single character, and with a "stronger" stroke I delete a whole word. Or when deleting files I could chose if I want the move them to the trashcan, or delete them finally (Del vs. Shift+Del)

fix itTuesday 24th February 2009 @ am

your exclude programs list straight up doesn't work seriously, i can list programs to excluse, and it just completely ignores it and keeps right on working inside that program, even though it messes them up your multi-monitor support is bad also. please fix it so i actually WANT to buy your software

cool siteTuesday 24th February 2009 @ am

so like your software, your ass site doesn't know how to function with a crlf paragraph return. problems: (1) exclusion list does not work, period, at all. (2) multi-monitors breaks it. try disabling a monitor and then re-enabling it and gmote will die.

craigTuesday 24th February 2009 @ am

The excluded programs list works fine for me - what OS are you using? And when you say "inside that program", are you sure it has focus? For example, add Notepad to the list, go to Notepad, click inside the window and try to draw a gesture, and it shouldn't work. The multi-monitor thing is a pain in the neck... I've tried to fix it but it's difficult without having access to a multi-monitor system. Sorry for slow responses - I really have no time at all these days. Looking for a job, trying to get a visa, everything's piling up I'm afraid...

DreadloxThursday 26th February 2009 @ pm

Great progam! I found it while trying to get mouse gestures in Google Chrome, and it rocks! I really miss one thing though from the mouse gesture apps I've used with IE and Firefox, and that is Right+Left-mouseclick (quickly after one another) and Left+Right-mouseclick. Most often used to go back/forward in the browser. It's very common in other gesture apps (all of them?), and I think a lot of people are used to these gestures and would like to be able to use them in gMote also... And I agree with "Rick Astley" about the problem to understand that you're supposed to record the gesture with the LEFT button - it took me also at least 5 minutes to get it! I also agrre that an "include list" would be a good thing (as a new user of gMote, I'd like to try it in only ONE app first) But thanks for a great piece of software!

informerFriday 27th February 2009 @ pm

Hello together, just wanted to report an issue of this othwerise great piece of software: I've set mouse gestures to middle click, and about every 20th gesture, explorer.exe crashes, when i use the middle mouse button to do a click on the taskbar. I suspect "Taskbar Shuffle" to be in conflict with gMote, because it also captures the middle click to close running programs... I would really appreciate, if you could look into this, although I am aware, that this is certainly a very rare problem - at the moment it keeps me from using gMote...

^L^Wednesday 4th March 2009 @ am

Thank You - Your App is a fine StrokeIt Alternative for me. =) BTW: There's another same named Remote Tool for Android-Mobile Phones (Handy here in EU) ... ;) http://www.gmote.org/screenshots

DougThursday 5th March 2009 @ pm

Please add to option the set mouse trail width to our own desire.

DreadloxSunday 8th March 2009 @ pm

Hello again! I can confirm the problems with Vista 64-bit that others have reported here. gMote does not work vey well on Vista Business 64-bit SP1. I think there is a problem recongizing apps. As someone said gMote often doesn't fill the "programs used recently" list correctly (it sometimes does but not always). And a right-click-event is propagated to the underlying app even though it shouldn't when a gesture is drawn. So right-click-menus are popped up after the gesture in most applications, in explorer the blue select-box is drawn at the same time as the gesture. It doesn't work vey well... Please could you have a look at this? I just discovered gMote and loved it whiler using it, but now I have a new computer with Vista 64-bit and I can't use it anymore :( :( :(

KangTuesday 10th March 2009 @ am

The close tab function for vista seems not working after a few try. Please look out.

KangThursday 12th March 2009 @ am

Normal right click will sometimes not function well if you set your gestures to be performed by only dragging right mouse button. Take a look.

BrannanThursday 12th March 2009 @ am

Hi, superb app let down slightly by the lack of multi-mon support. Thanks again though

craigFriday 13th March 2009 @ am

Hang on folks... right now I'm writing an Accessibility Mode feature, to let people unable to use key combinations or complex mouse presses to use gestures by hovering (for a nice gent in Italy) =).

ntSaturday 14th March 2009 @ am

Hi, I want to use the key board shortcut win+shitf+left in win7. But I cant get it to work the way it dose when using the keyboard directly. With ether key combinations or keystrokes "[win:[shift:{left}]]". Is it a bug or am I doing something wrong.

AxiomaTuesday 17th March 2009 @ pm

maravilloso! funciona excelente en windows xp español. lo mejor de todo, es que se pueden excluir algunos software, como OPERA.

StevenSaturday 21st March 2009 @ pm

Loving this program, but Play/Pause in Media Players doesn't work for me either :(

DavidWednesday 1st April 2009 @ pm

Thanks for the software, had it suggested to me as a solution for mouse gestures for Chrome. Liking it so far, but found one gesture I use frequently in Opera that I can't find a way to replicate. Is there any way to use right mouse click + mouse wheel up/down for browser next tab/previous tab? I assigned gestures to them but using the wheel is faster + deeply ingrained as habit now.

P CauseThursday 9th April 2009 @ pm

tried to download, but when I try to open the zip, 6zip says it is corrupt.

Friday 17th April 2009 @ pm

Hello Nice program I noticed something nobody mentioned yet : After the gesture # 10, there is nothing in the gesture set screen on the right of the gesture and if I click on the area, the action box is blank too but the gesture is still working. I'll try to reinstall the program just in case. I also have a suggestion : when we save the gesture, put the installation directory by default instead of the last directory used to set a gesture. I appreciate your job anyway :-)))

leeThursday 23rd April 2009 @ am

for the keystrokes function, how do i input the fn key (found on most laptops) this will be very useful. this string doesn't work [fn:f6]

sjc3fThursday 7th May 2009 @ am

for the keystrokes function, how can i process printscreen, I use {prtsc}, but it doesn't work.

Bruce wangThursday 14th May 2009 @ am

When I use the sogou browser in China and gmote, the gesture in sogou browser is unaviliable. How can I do for using the sogou's gesture when i use gmote.

Mike GSunday 17th May 2009 @ pm

Just installed gmote 1.4 today. Thanks for this great software and good luck finding a job. I've got browser: back and browser: forward configured for Windows Explorer (XP SP3), IE8 and Chrome (1.0.154.65) and do nothing everywhere else. Browser: back works in IE and Chrome, but not in Win Explorer. Browser: forward only works in IE8...

Mike GSunday 17th May 2009 @ pm

Even though there's still some issues to iron out (what software doesn't have those?) I just sent a donation for gmote. Normally I don't do that for free/donation-ware unless (1) I really like it and (2) I've been using it long enough to be confident I'll continue using it. In this case, I really like what you've done so far and want to support more work on it. Come on folks, if you want to encourage dual monitor, rocker, faster response to bug fixes, etc., vote by sending a few bucks. We give money without a second thought to to fat cats who are, in some cases, ripping off people and the earth to make more money than they probably deserve. So why not a few dollars/euros whatever for small time artists, developers when they create something special? OK, I'll get off the soap box now . :-]

siglielThursday 28th May 2009 @ am

I want to exclude all other programs except known programs I registered (i.e. Chrome). Is there any way to do this?

DockWednesday 3rd June 2009 @ pm

I'm running Vista 64 at work and have just installed gMote. I cannot create new gestures. I follow the instructions; but when I attempt to record the gesture, it shows on the large right screen, but never shows on the list to the left.

Q. JiangThursday 4th June 2009 @ am

hi, I want to add the mouse gestures more, but it does not work, that is the new gestures can not be added.

W WorthFriday 5th June 2009 @ pm

Love gMote, i use it in Vista with my Wacom Graphire4 pen tablet and it makes it ten times better, the only problem i've noticed is when i set the gestures to 'hold right button and drag mouse' a normal right click (to get the right click menu on items) rarely works, and the 'timeout' option doesn't work no matter how long i hold the right click button on my pen for, my work around is to use the middle click button on my pen instead (although i would prefer to use the right click button) that way timeouts and middle clicks work as they should, but the strange thing is this problem doesn't happen when i use the mouse's right click button (timeouts and right clicks work as they should) also in XP i never got this right click problem when using the pen. Even still awesome program

Toby SheppardWednesday 10th June 2009 @ am

I cant record any gestures for some reason. The error message is always 'unrecognized' Any clues ?

JeffSaturday 20th June 2009 @ pm

Just found gMote from pendriveapps.com, very neat program. As mentioned in the doc, need to use 'fast trails' on vista.

JeffSaturday 20th June 2009 @ pm

Looking at the memory usage, gMote uses about 28mb on Vista. That seems rather high for such a small program running in the background.

CraigMonday 22nd June 2009 @ pm

Hi everyone. Toby - you're using the right mouse button to record - use the left one! Jeff - you're right, the memory thing sucks, and those who've noticed multi-monitor wierdness, tablet problems and other drawbacks for those of you with fancy systems will be pleased to know that I'm about a fifth through completely rewriting gMote. It's gonna kick ass! :D

AlexeyTuesday 30th June 2009 @ am

Great progam! i'm agreу with "Dreadlox" about Right+Left-mouseclick - very usefull feature? may include it in Gmote?

KinoxThursday 9th July 2009 @ am

Very useful indeed! Just want to feedback an issue. In Firefox and Chrome, middle click on link is supposed to open the link in a new tab. But since middle click is used in gMote to draw the gesture too, many times, the middle click in the browsers will be semi-ignored. By semi, I mean the browsers actually indicate that the link is being "selected", but it doesn't open in new tab. I have to middle click on the link again for it to be recognised. Consequently, sometimes I middle-click on many interesting links in a go for reading later but I didn't notice that the middle clicks were ignored, and so I missed reading some pages that I wanted to check out. Thanks for sharing gMote with the world! :)

AjlexTuesday 14th July 2009 @ am

The useful program. There are small defects, but hope in following versions they will be corrected. Thanks.

ExcellentFriday 17th July 2009 @ am

This is a great tool. Actually this is a breakthrough, a couple of years from now, this feature will become a standard in any offered system. and maybe all application will start relying/implementing/using mouse gestures. But GMote would have probably evolved. It's a great great tool, fortunately i don't face other user's problems, it has it small setbacks. But i got used to it. you only lose your Explorer RClick+drag, but otherwise I'm cool, since i use VS2005 so i can put all my custom shortcuts, especially the most common when i'm browsing or debugging. Any application that supports shortcuts, gmote works fine there. I hope we can help you in any way, i guess most of us are programmers here. Anyway, 1) I second the 'timer' programming of events 2) concerning the drag and drop, is there no way for gmote, after detecting that it's 'not recognized' for the selected application, to imitate the movement and sends the messages to this client application? 3) Actions can be the sequence of multiple predefined actions. Damn you can start doing animation with explorer and gmote. This can become a smal town trojan :P Keep up the great work

ntSaturday 8th August 2009 @ pm

Any updates on the progress of the next release?

mprostSunday 9th August 2009 @ pm

I second the petition for a 64 bit version. Thanks and great program BTW.

joshSunday 16th August 2009 @ am

@Knox - this is what i tried to say in my earlier comment, but you articulated it much better. This is a seriously frustrating issue that should be fixed in the upcoming version. It seems firefox will register that a click has happened and mark the link as read, though a new tab will not open up. I'm glad someone else is having the same issue. craig, do you understand this issue? need help reproducing it? please fix...

ShawnTuesday 25th August 2009 @ am

Hi Craig, I really love this software :) but I'm not sure I'm using this software correctly. I'm trying to record mouse gestures for Chrome and FF. I've recorded a Down+Right (using LMB) to simulate a browser:close tab action. The gestures are displayed in the gesture set, so I believe they are recorded properly. These are my settings: - Default Action (All Programs) : Do Nothing - Google Chrome: Browser: Close Tab - Firefox: Close Tab But it's not working - no mouse trails are displayed over Chrome or FF when I draw using RMB. However if I do a Ctrl+RMB drag for "gesture anywhere", the trails are displayed. Kindly assist? Regards, Shawn

DanThursday 27th August 2009 @ pm

I've used Maxthon since 2001 (or so). It's most useful feature to me is the gesture to open a link in a new tab. The gesture is of course editible but I think this is the default (which I use) - left click on a link and hold, move to the right a bit, release. Very useful for opening google results in tabs. Nobody's gestures that I've found have this ability, (not that I've looked exhaustively). I'm still using Maxthon1 for this reason, although other browsers have finally caught up with Maxthon's other features (notably it had tabs years before others did). Chrome is significantly faster though and provides the ability to click a link and drag it to the tab bar to open in a new tab. Sometimes it is a drag to drag that far though.

joshSunday 30th August 2009 @ pm

@Dan - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10875

Daniel SerodioMonday 31st August 2009 @ pm

I'm a longtime StrokeIt user, and I'm trying gMote as StrokeIt doesn't play nice with Vista. Like others have mentioned, the "maximize" command should work for "unmaximize" (restore) too

Bert & ErnieSunday 6th September 2009 @ am

In win7 it seams the POPUP ow windows or applications in window trigger before the command is fired by GMote. Causing the key combination to apply to the POPUP ratherthan to the main program window. Is there a way to prevent this?

JoshMonday 14th September 2009 @ am

@Daniel Serodio - have you tried browsing the strokeit forums to get the newest version? development on strokeit has resumed - http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/forum/read.php?3,54070

dazzaaMonday 21st September 2009 @ am

I've just found you :), been trialling miceplus. Not really used gmote yet but i did notice that it breaks winroll. right clicking on titlebar rolls up the window (as it should) but it rolls back down when i let go of the mouse :(.

guestMonday 26th October 2009 @ am

There is some problem with Maxthon.exe http://www.maxthon.com/

SteiniSunday 1st November 2009 @ pm

@Dan - You can use Opera, it also has integrated mouse gestures... Open in new tab: click-> drag down, open in background tab, click-> drag down-> drag up www.opera.com (btw. Opera pioneered tabs in 96 ;) )

fabischlSunday 1st November 2009 @ pm

It is possible to control gmot with the left Mouse button? I like to use gmot with a Touch screen and there I need the left Mouse button.

patSunday 8th November 2009 @ pm

Just the best mouse gesture software for Vista. Fantastic work, and simple, and free! I was desperate when I couldn't use Sensiva in Vista. Ignore cheap critics. Anyways... hope you're still in the mood to follow-up and upgrade it every now and then...

ASGMonday 16th November 2009 @ pm

I have just discovered your program and I think it is great! It is going to save me much time at work (I am an IT professional). Thanks!

HawkSaturday 28th November 2009 @ pm

Thanks for such a wonderful software.There are some bugs and suggestions listed below: 1. [ctrl:f4] if typed in keystrokes is read as [ctrl:f] if there is predefined [ctrl:f] in an application otherwise it works fine as [ctrl:f4]. It works properly if used as key combination. 2. Can we have some conditional statements included like in notepad++ to close a tab(done by ctrl:w) when two or more tabs are open and close the application(done by alt:f4) when just one tab is left using same stroke. 3. I think it does not support "fn" key in laptops. 4. Can we include mouse clicks as input to keystrokes.

AlexanderSaturday 17th April 2010 @ pm

A lot of thanks for such a excellent peace of softwrae! :-) I would like to express a suggestion: it could be very usefull to be able to give an arbitrary name to each action, which is assigned to a gesture. The names of some .exe files are sometimes not very meaningful, or they are very large and/or more or less complicated. This make for instance difficult to understand, what was recognised with which gesture by gMot. ;-) The same happens with keystrokes if they ar a complicated combination of function keys with characters or with other keys: no one is able to recognise at once what gMote shows on the tray and that can result in a catastrofe, if it was the wrong keystroke combination... May be you can implement this feature in a next version? (please, please, please :-D ) All the best for you! Alexander PB

AlexanderSaturday 17th April 2010 @ pm

excuse my fault: i wrote above "catastrofe" and right is "catastrophe". ;-) Regards

AlexanderSunday 6th June 2010 @ am

There is a possible bug to report: programs and applications don't start in front when started from gMote if another window is active. I can't do anything on my computer without gMote. Now, I was wery annoyed because my applications didn't start in front if another Window was active. It makes very laborious and annoying to bring the programms in front with mouse clicks each time. I thought it was something wrong with my Windows XP. And then I began to experiment and to start programms with and without gMote. The results: each time I invoqued a programm or application from the Quick Launch Bar or from Start Menu they ware started in front. To the contrary they didn't started in front when I invoked the same programs with gMote. Conclusion: probably has gMote a bug, which makes it unable to start allways programs in front.

水無月Saturday 17th July 2010 @ am

Hello, you hear the first time. How to run the "Shift" + "Ctrl" I think the best way without wearing features such as original windows with auto scroll menu and press. Move the mouse is a good key while pressing the two left hand And you thought I set a mouse to do just this. [1] If you have a 5 button mouse made by Microsoft Macro Editor intelligent points Press Ctrl Pressing Ctrl releasing Shift Shift release 1000 second wait (wait for second time in 1000 the Ministry will be better put to other variable is the time be changed to the Ministry.) Side buttons and assign it Press the button and pop the side (not on Hold), only one second Ctrl + Shit is ready for. [2] If you are using non-Microsoft 5 button mouse intellipoint macro works the same as creating macros, etc. HiMacroExt its software *. hmc side buttons can be another way to assign it. There are other ways I think that a lot.

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I'm a web, Windows, Mac, J2ME and iPhone developer. I'm the mobile development lead at trainchinese, and the developer of gMote, a tool that lets you control your Windows PC using mouse gestures.

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