Gestures

A gesture plays animations, sounds and chat when you type a trigger word (like /wave) or press a shortcut key. To use a gesture it has to be active.

Open the gestures window with Communicate → Gestures… (also in the Avatar menu) or Ctrl+G.

The gestures window

The list shows each gesture's Name, its Chat trigger and its Key shortcut. Active gestures are marked.

Button	What it does
Activate/Deactivate selected gesture	Switch a gesture on or off.
Play / Stop	Run the gesture now, without typing its trigger.
Edit	Open the gesture for editing (see below).
Make new gesture	Create an empty gesture.
Delete this gesture	Delete it.
Sets…	Open Gesture Sets, to switch whole groups of gestures on and off at once.

The gear (More options) menu also has Rename, Copy, Paste, Copy UUID, Save to current outfit, and for sets: New Set from Selected…, Add Selected to Set and Gesture Sets….

To use a gesture, type its trigger in nearby chat (with Auto-complete gestures in nearby chat on in Preferences → Chat, suggestions appear as you type) or press its key. Number-key shortcuts also work from the numpad with NumLock on.

Editing a gesture

Double-click a gesture, or select it and click Edit:

Field	What it does
Description	A note for yourself.
Trigger	The word or phrase you type in chat to run it.
Replace with	Words said instead of the trigger. For example, trigger hello replaced with howdy turns "I wanted to say hello" into "I wanted to say howdy".
Shortcut Key	A key (with optional Ctrl, Shift or Alt) that runs the gesture.
Library and Add >>	Add steps: an animation to play, a sound, chat to say, or a wait.
Steps	The steps in order. Up, Down and Remove rearrange them. Select a step to set its options (which animation, Start or Stop it, and for waits until key is released, until animations are done or a time in seconds).
Active	Switch the gesture on.

All steps happen at once unless you add wait steps between them. Preview tries it out; Save keeps your changes.