Move
Hold your hand open and move it. The pointer follows the knuckles, not a fingertip, so pinching never nudges the cursor off target.
PointerNo mouse needed. Just you, a webcam and one hand.
Your hand is
the mouse.
Move the pointer, click, drag, right-click and scroll with natural hand gestures, using nothing but the webcam you already have. It controls your real pointer in every app, and every frame stays on your PC.
Six gestures. That's the whole manual.
Gestures that feel obvious the first time
Everything is driven by one hand. Nothing to memorise, nothing to calibrate.
Pinch to click
Touch your index finger to your thumb. One pinch is one click, two quick pinches are a double-click. Nothing happens while you hold it, so clicks never turn into accidental drags.
Left buttonPinch with ring finger
Touch your ring finger to your thumb and hold. The left button stays down while you move, and lets go the moment the fingers part.
Drag & dropPinch with middle finger
Touch your middle finger to your thumb to open the context menu. Fires once per pinch so menus never flicker.
Right buttonThumbs up
Make a fist with your thumb pointing up and the page scrolls up. Hold it and the scroll eases in and keeps going.
Scroll upThumbs down
Same fist, thumb pointing down, to scroll down. The pointer stays frozen while you scroll, so nothing drifts.
Scroll downBuilt to feel like a real mouse
Steady, instant, trustworthy
A gesture mouse lives or dies on two things: a pointer that is steady but never sluggish, and clicks that happen exactly when you mean them. Both got the serious treatment.
One Euro filtered pointer
The pointer runs through a speed-adaptive One Euro filter: heavy smoothing when your hand is still, almost none when it moves fast. No jitter at rest, no lag in motion. Both knobs are sliders in the app.
Hysteresis and debouncing
A pinch engages below one threshold and only releases above a higher one, and every gesture must persist across several frames before it fires. Single-frame glitches are simply ignored.
Knuckle-anchored pointer
Fingertips move when you pinch; knuckles don't. Anchoring the pointer to the knuckles means a click lands where you aimed, and a short settle time freezes the pointer the instant a pinch starts.
Scale and depth aware
Every distance is normalised by the size of your palm, so pinches work whether you sit close or lean back. Depth is included too, so fingers that only overlap on camera don't count as touching.
Active zone, no reaching
Only the centre of the camera frame maps to your whole screen. Small, comfortable hand movements reach every corner, and corner targets are reachable by design.
Private by construction
Hand tracking runs on your CPU with Google's MediaPipe model. The app has no network code at all. Video never leaves the machine, and nothing is recorded.
How it works
From webcam to Windows input in about 50 milliseconds
-
1
Capture
Frames are read on a dedicated thread through Media Foundation at 640 × 480, always keeping only the newest frame so nothing queues up.
-
2
Track 21 landmarks
MediaPipe's hand landmarker finds the wrist, every knuckle and every fingertip in 2D plus relative depth, in about 20 ms on a laptop CPU.
-
3
Recognise
A small state machine turns palm-normalised distances and finger curls into one stable gesture per frame, with hysteresis so nothing flickers.
-
4
Drive the pointer
The filtered position goes straight to the Windows input API: real cursor moves, real button events, real scroll wheel ticks that work in every application.
Download Palmo
One portable file. Download it, run it, press Start tracking. No installer, no account, no telemetry.
Download Palmo.exeBefore you start
- Any webcam works. Face the camera from roughly arm's length with your hand in view.
- The first launch takes a few seconds while the single file unpacks itself. After that it starts quickly.
- Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC" because the app is not code-signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.
- Good, even lighting on your hand gives the steadiest tracking.
- Press Ctrl + Alt + G any time to quit instantly, from any app.
FAQ
Questions, answered
Does any video leave my computer?
No. Palmo contains no networking code. The camera feed is processed in memory on your CPU and discarded frame by frame. Nothing is saved to disk, uploaded or logged.
Why does Windows warn me when I run it?
The executable is not signed with a paid code-signing certificate, so SmartScreen shows a generic warning for any new, unsigned program. Choose More info → Run anyway. If you prefer, the full source code is available to read and build yourself.
The pointer jitters or lags. What do I tune?
Open the Pointer panel. Raise Stability if the pointer trembles when your hand is still; raise Responsiveness if it trails behind fast movements. Most people are happy with the defaults plus a little extra stability.
Clicks trigger too easily, or not easily enough.
Use Pinch sensitivity under Gestures. The Live signal meters show your real-time pinch distance against the engage and release thresholds, so you can see exactly where your natural pinch lands and tune to it in seconds.
Does it work with multiple monitors?
Yes. By default your hand maps to the main display. Turn on Span all monitors to stretch the active zone across the entire desktop.
How do I stop it in a hurry?
Press Ctrl + Alt + G and Palmo quits instantly from any app, releasing any held button first. For a softer stop use Pause control in the window or the tray menu, or simply take your hand out of view.
Which camera does it use?
The default camera, unless you pick another in the Camera panel. If a camera opens but never shows a picture, switch the backend from Automatic to DirectShow.