I have a carousel on the site similar to Airbnb. It can be swiped on mobile as expected:
On desktop though they add arrows and remove swipe.
The question is should you remove swiping on desktop? From Fitt‘s perspective you‘re getting larger area to operate vs arrows, but how clear and comfortable is it to swipe on the desktop with a cursor? Are there any other caveats?
I think swipeable area gets secondary when it comes to the question of common/uncommon actions.
However, I believe this very question becomes interesting with:
With these, using swipe actions on desktop gets a new dimension, and may turn out to be in fact quite a good decision – especially considering the type of system you make. And while nothing stops you from using both swipe and arrows, I think this is the direction to go, or at least: try.
I think you also risk that users won't swipe and therefore won't learn about what's hidden there, so it's also a question of what you're able to compromise. If the content in the slider is extremely important for accomplishing the website's goals, I'd rather think of a different way of showing this content.
