how to use a touchscreen ?
connect your L5 to an external touchscreen monitor and run GNU/Emacs on it … there ! two birds with one stone 
Thanks to everyone for suggestions. This thread seems to have evolved into a discussion of changes/improvements which might be made. I have concluded that I might be able to solve part of my problem by connecting a keyboard and/or mouse to the phone, and have ordered a connector to try this.
When I use the L5 touchscreen,
I experience that often when I do a single touch on a file it starts as if I would have done a double click.
Also it is challenging to select something from the right click menu. I enter the menu with a longer touch, but I would like for the menu to somehow stay active for a while so that I could select something from it.
Ok so Librem 5 Touchscreen support: PressureEngine(Apple call 3DTouch) please enable this feature on GnuLinux and GnuPhosh, also enable DoubleTaptoWake for inactive mode.
iPhone 6s, enabled 3D touch in 2015
Huawei Mate S, enabled FORCE touch in 2015
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Thanks Amarok this was helpful!
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How to navigate Files in the L5 using the touch screen:
To select a file or folder, first long press some other file or folder until you see the menu pop up in the background. Note that you won’t be able to use that menu here. However, you can now click on the actual folder or file you really want to select or open by touching it. After that, touch the keyboard icon in the lower right, and in it hit the blue enter key to open the selected folder or file.
Painful yes, but effective. Does anyone know any better way to navigate Files in L5? I’ve been waiting and hoping for years that this might work better someday, and each time I gave it a try I quickly set the L5 aside for another year or so out of frustration. Tonight I decided to try again and what I describe above was all I could figure out, (short of plugging in a keyboard and mouse) which doesn’t work in the field.
What OS are you using? PureOS Byzantium? The answer is very different depending on you system, because there was done a lot of work and changes around the whole UI.
This is a Librem 5 phone. I’m using the OS that came with the phone. $ uname -r gives 6.6.0-1-librem5
I don’t care for kernel, but for distro and its version. But sounds like you are on PureOS Byzantium.
Currently the developers are close before stable releasing PureOS Crimson (next big version), which contains a file manager where context menu is working. You also can navigate just normal if you activate single click to open files and folders. If you want to do so with double click, Byzantium works better, but if you like single click, you should probably upgrade your system manually, if you know how to do this.
On PureOS Dawn the file manager will make a huge step forwards and most problems are gone. Developers told us that Dawn will very likely not take such a long time. So the file-manager-heaven is visible at the horizon. 
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$ lsb_release -a # gives ‘byzantium release 10’.
Yes under ‘Files’ app | ☰ | Preferences | Action to Open Items was set to ‘Single Click’.
I gave Double Click mode another try today. Double clicking a folder still doesn’t open it.
To select (make blue) still requires that I long press another item first, then touch the item I want to select.
Then I’ve found that after holding this folder down for a long touch, then untouching for a moment, and then quickly double touching seems to open folder. Avoids having to find the enter key via the keyboard icon.
Reminds me of CPM back in the day. Functional, but really hard to use.
Thanks Ick
I used Byzantium for over 2 years and the only issue I had was opening the context menu (used on screen keyboard for it). But double tab to open files and folders were always functional in Byzantium, same as selecting.
Maybe you should try to reinstall nautilus. Sounds to me as something is broken on your installation.