Touchpad tap configured as "mouse back button" not working in Explorer

I have a ThinkPad T480 laptop, using a Synaptics touchpad. I use the built-in Windows 10 touchpad settings to configure the tap functionality.

I configured the touchpad to function as a "mouse back button" when I tap it with three fingers. It works fine in Firefox but it does not work at all in Windows Explorer (i.e., browsing files on my computer.)

Touch pad scrolling works fine, even in Windows Explorer.

Interestingly, I can get it to work as long as Explorer isn't focused. So, for example, if I click an empty part of the taskbar and then put the cursor over an Explorer window - without clicking it - then I do a three-finger tap, Explorer successfully goes back.

One other interesting observation: if I set three-finger tap to something else (say, Action Center), it does work in Explorer. This suggests that the problem is not Explorer failing to recognize any taps - just SPECIFICALLY back-button tap functionality.

Also, I tried setting two- and four-finger taps as mouse back button functionality but it doesn't work for those either, meaning the problem is not specific to three-finger taps.

Any ideas?

well when you set touchpad to shortcut keys what it does is that it tries to emulate short cut keys .

So while Back shortcut key is Ctrl + Arrow Left in web browsers , back key in Windows Explorer is Backspace .

So technically your touchpad is sending Ctrl + Arrow Left to Windows Explorer which means nothing much to which .

If the whole aim is to control Windows Explorer so try to see if you can assign Backspace to that gesture .

Also I quite cant get how the application receive key input while not in focus , if this was valid it should be an error , but other than that there is no error there in Windows Explorer not accepting such shortcut input .