A Beginner’s Guide to the Mac Trackpad
So if you’re new to Mac and you have a Mac with a trackpad which would include all of the MacBooks and any desktop Mac bought with the magic trackpad or the magic mouse then you may not yet be familiar with all the different trackpad gestures that you have with your Mac.
For more information about these gestures just need to go into System Preferences – choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Trackpad. In System Preferences you can learn which gestures work with your Mac, change the type of gesture, and even turn the gesture off. Sometimes you trigger some gestures that you don’t want to use at all. In that case you can consider turn that off.
Trackpad gestures require a Magic Trackpad or built-in Multi-Touch trackpad. If your trackpad supports Force Touch, you can also Force click and get haptic feedback settings.
Trackpad gestures – Point & Click and Scroll & Zoom
Tap to click
Tap with one finger to click. You can set Tap to click which if you have it turned on means you can just tap with one finger. If I turn it off that means I actually have to press down on my trackpad.
Secondary click (right-click)
Click or tap with two fingers. Secondary click, which is what windows users call a right click, is used all the time. You can set it up to be a tap with two fingers, a click in the bottom right corner, or a click in the bottom left corner of your trackpad. Whichever suits you the best.
Smart zoom
Double-tap with two fingers to zoom in and back out of a webpage or PDF.
Scroll
Slide two fingers up or down to scroll.
Zoom in or out
Pinch with two fingers to zoom in or out.
Rotate
Move two fingers around each other to rotate a photo or other item.
Trackpad gestures – More
Swipe between pages
Swipe left or right with two fingers to show the previous or next page. Well this works in some apps to scroll between pages. It’s the same as using the Back button on Safari or Preview.
Swipe between full-screen apps
Swipe left or right with three or four fingers to move between desktops and full-screen apps. Using multiple desktop is one of the key ways to keep yourself organised when you’re working on a small screen with many different apps and windows open, and this gesture to switch between them makes the process of switching between them easy and fast.
Open Notification Center
Swipe left from the right edge with two fingers to show Notification Center. You might not use Notification Center often, but it’s gotten pretty useful after the updates in Big Sur. It’s nice to know that getting to the Notification Center just takes a two finger swipe. This one’s a little tricky to get the hang, as you have to swipe from the far right of the track pad for it to work properly. I would even say to swipe from outside of the trackpad to get a feeling like you are pulling it from the side.
Mission Control
Swipe up with three or four fingers to open Mission Control. I recommend to set it for 3 fingers it’s easy to do that and more logical in combination the previous setting where you swipe between apps and windows with 3 fingers as well.
App Exposé
Swipe down with four fingers to see all windows of the app you’re using. App Exposé is very similar to Mission control is which is swiping down with three fingers and it basically shows you all the windows for the current app. If you have 10 different word documents open and plus many other apps at the same time. It will kind of filter all the other apps and show you only open windows from the one you are currently using. I don’t find it useful that is why I have it off. I don’t want to complicate it for myself and for you neither with so many gestures. You can get a nice overview of open apps from Mission control instead.
Launchpad
Pinch your thumb and three fingers together to display Launchpad. If you’ve forgotten what it even is, Launchpad is simply a way to access all your apps in a grid. If you don’t keep an Applications folder on your Dock, Launchpad’s a useful way to access all your apps. The Three finger and thumb pinch is a bit awkward to get used to, but once you do you’ll be opening up Launchpad with ease.
Show desktop
Spread your thumb and three fingers apart to show your desktop. You select that and you spread with your thumb and three fingers out and it shows you the desktop. It gets rid of all the extra windows. For instance, I have a bunch of extra windows open, I could use this to get rid of them to see files on my desktop, and then I could use the opposite gesture to bring everything back like it was before.
The last 2 trackpad gestures I use very rarely or not at all. There’s a chance you’ve invoked this one on accident before, anyway it’s worth mentioning.
Three finger drag
Use three fingers to drag items on your screen, then click or tap to drop. You can turn on this feature in Accessibility preferences, but personally I don’t use it.
Look up and data detectors
Tap with three fingers to look up a word or take actions with dates, addresses, phone numbers, and other data. In Safari with three fingers tap and you’ll get a preview of that web site and tap any word with three fingers and you’ll get the definition of the word. Do the same on any text file or image and you’ll bring up Quick Look.
Mouse gestures
For more information about these gestures, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Mouse.
You will find here very similar setting and gestures like in the trackpad manu. Secondary click (right-click), Scroll, Smart zoom or Double-tap with two fingers to open Mission Control are all available on the Magic Mouse too.
These gestures are really something what distinguishes the Mac from other computers, You should definitely take advantage of that. After a short while it will become essential to you and you will not believe it how could you control the computer without them before.
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