Touch and Gesture controls on Windows Devices

Last updated on Jun 24, 2025

Control Premiere Pro using touch gestures on Microsoft Surface Pro and Windows for faster, intuitive editing workflows.

Discover seamless touch and gesture‑based editing in Premiere Pro. Premiere Pro supports touch-friendly gestures for scrubbing, selecting, and arranging clips into rough cuts. While optimized for touch, features like thumbnail controls and Program Monitor drop-zones also work with a mouse. Focus on assembly or rough-cut workflows for the best touch experience but use traditional mouse edits when needed.

Control Premiere Pro with touch on your Microsoft Surface Pro and Windows multi-touch devices. Pair touch gestures with your keyboard workflow to speed up the following tasks:

  • Build cuts
  • Scrub media
  • Mark in and out points
  • Drag-and-drop clips to timelines
  • Edit

One-finger tap/drag

Using a single finger tap, you can select a clip in the Project panel to enable the thumbnail controls on the clip. Tap the thumbnail control’s button or drag the clip to perform scrubbing actions. With one finger, you can drag the clip to the Program Monitor for use with the edit drop-zones, or drag and add to the Timeline panel.

A screen capture from a video clip is displayed as thumbnails in the Project panel of Premiere Pro.
Tap and drag clips to preview, scrub, or add them directly to your timeline.

Two-finger pinch to zoom

Using two fingers in a pinching motion toward each other you can zoom out a clip. Spreading apart two fingers zooms in the clip. You can zoom in the Project panel (in both List and Icon views), the Program Monitor panel, and the Timeline panel.

A screen capture from a video clip is displayed with arrows indicating a two-finger pinch gesture to zoom in or out in Project panel of Premiere Pro.
Use two fingers to pinch or spread on a clip to zoom out or in while browsing in the Project panel.

Two-finger scroll

You can scroll panels that include vertical or horizontal scroll bars with two fingers moving in the same direction. In panels such as the Timeline that contains multiple scrolling zones, you can scroll in only one direction and in the zone where the scrolling gesture began.

A screen capture from a video clip shows video thumbnails in Premiere Pro with arrows pointing up or down, showing how to scroll using a two-finger swipe.
Scroll through clips in the Project panel using a two-finger swipe gesture to move vertically or horizontally.

Two-finger scrub

Using two fingers in a gesture like the scroll gesture, you can scrub back and forth clips and sequences in the Project panel Icon View, and in the Program Monitor panels, similar to hover scrubbing. The scrubbing gesture moves the playhead for the clip/sequence in a 1:1 relationship based on the width of the thumbnail/monitor, up to 30 minutes in duration. Each additional 30-minute duration requires another scrub gesture, and the playhead remains where it was stopped at the end of each gesture.

To use the two-finger scrub gesture on a clip in the Project panel, tap the clip to select it. The thumbnail controls appear.

A screen capture from a video clip shows a man in water with arrows showing a two-finger swipe to scrub through the clip.
Scrub through a clip by swiping two fingers horizontally across the thumbnail in either direction.