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There is no option in Mouse & Touchpad Settings to enable horizontal scrolling in Ubuntu 13.04+ (Raring/Saucy/Trusty) (GNOME 3.8+):

Mouse & Touchpad Settings

No horizontal scrolling even by enabling two finger scroll or content sticks to fingers.

How is it possible?

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3 Answers 3

up vote 56 down vote accepted

There’s a way through dconf Editor; so:

  1. open dconf Editor through the Dash;
  2. go to org > gnome > settings-daemon > peripherals > touchpad;
  3. check horiz-scroll-enabled, as you see in the screenshot.

Enable horizontal scrolling

Edit: Dconf Editor was pre-installed on 13.04, where I first faced the problem; but on 13.10 and 14.04 it’s easier to use gsettings, see Samuel Cavazos’s answer.

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Thank you! I still don't understand the reason for removing that option from the control panel :/ –  mid_kid Apr 16 '13 at 21:09
Yeah, me too. Seems it’s about GNOME project, where functionality is sacrificed for simplicity! –  AliNa Apr 17 '13 at 19:10
At least they don't make it impossible ;) –  mid_kid Apr 23 '13 at 15:37
This is a moment when I wish stackoverflow framework permitted multiple upvotes ;) thanks –  lu1s Jul 23 '13 at 8:23
@AliNa I aproved an edit that compliments your findings. –  Braiam Oct 19 '13 at 21:35

Or just run

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad horiz-scroll-enabled "true"

in a terminal

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Alternative way: run this in your command line

synclient HorizTwoFingerScroll=1
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Does it enable edge scrolling too if I’ve disabled two-finger scrolling? –  AliNa Aug 29 '13 at 15:45
I think edge scrolling is controlled by other options: VertEdgeScroll and HorizEdgeScroll –  Dmitry Pashkevich Jan 18 '14 at 15:55
Neither dconf editor nor gsettings worked for me on Lubuntu 14.04, but this one did: synclient HorizEdgeScroll=1 –  iynque Mar 6 at 3:08

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