Gest

Note: The app is no longer supported, so it is now impossible to purchase the application. Nonetheless, you can still download it from Softpedia and use it with the limitations listed on this page

Gest is a simple-to-use software application that implements mouse gestures into Windows, enabling you to get better control over the OS when working with various programs. It contains approachable features that can be figured out by all types of users.

There is no installation involved, which makes Gest portable. This means that you can drop its executable file in any part of the disk and just click it to launch the tool. Otherwise, you can keep it stored on a USB flash drive to be able to directly run it on any computer and apply mouse gestures.

At startup, Gest offers to automatically run at every Windows startup until further notice. It creates an icon in the system tray area and sits there silently while it's active, so it doesn't interrupt your normal computer activities.

You can bring up the configuration panel to define gestures, personalize the gesture box and mouse trail, as well as fiddle with additional options.

As far as gestures are concerned, you can define mouse movements for going forward and backward, refreshing the page, going up one level, closing the window, opening the last active window, going to the next window, creating a new one, minimizing, maximizing and restoring the window, as well as for showing settings. These options can be restored to default anytime.

When creating the gestures by holding down the right-click mouse button, Gest shows a small box on the upper left corner of the screen, which keeps track of all sequential movements you perform, in order to match them to one of the previously described actions. If your movements do not correspond to any of the gestures, the application gives you the possibility to assign it on the spot. However, it doesn't let you set up other actions apart from the one available in the list.

You can change the gesture box color scheme and position, hide the box, as well as pick a different color for the mouse trail, which appears when you "draw" a gesture by holding down the right-click button. It's also possible to modify the trail diameter, adjust its opacity level, or disable it.

Additional configuration settings focus on the mouse sensitivity, a list with excluded applications where the gestures do not apply for, modifier key, software updates, hiding the system tray icon, and asking the tool to run at Windows startup.

We haven't come across any stability issues in our tests, thanks to the fact that the program didn't hang, crash or prompt error messages. As we expected, it had minimal impact on PC performance, running on low CPU and RAM.

To sum it up, Gest provides you with a convenient method of navigating the operating system using mouse gestures. Too bad that it doesn't support custom commands, though.