All trackpad gestures on MacBook or external Magic Trackpad

All trackpad gestures on MacBook or external Magic Trackpad.

All trackpad gestures on MacBook or external Magic Trackpad

Apple’s Magic Trackpad lets you use a variety of multi-touch gestures. The unit’s large work surface contributes to this. You can perform useful actions with one or multiple fingers: tap, slide, pinch together, or spread apart. And the Force Touch trackpad on Mac computers also responds to pressure on its surface with tactile feedback.

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List of multi-touch trackpad gestures on apple notebooks and external Magic Trackpad

For more information about these gestures, go to the apple menu () → System settings and click on “trackpad«.

In this section, you can not only find out which gestures your Mac supports, but also change or disable them completely. The gestures described are supported by the Macbook’s Magic Trackpad or built-in multi-touch trackpad.

click-to-click. A short press on the touchpad surface is enough to simulate the click of the left mouse button.

Click with the right mouse button. To recreate the secondary click, press down on the touchpad surface with two fingers.

smart scale. When viewing a web page or PDF document, double-tapping the touchpad with two fingers will intelligently zoom in or out.

Displacement. To scroll the screen, simply slide two fingers up or down. This gesture replaces the use of the mouse scroll wheel. Trackpad scrolling can also be disabled. To do this, go to apple → System Settings → Universal Access → Mouse and Trackpad → Trackpad Settings and uncheck the box there.Displacement«.

Image scaling. You can zoom in or out as desired by pinching or pinching two fingers together.

Spin. To rotate a photo or some other object, rotate two fingers on the trackpad relative to each other in the desired direction.

Scrolling between pages with swipe. To display the previous or next page, simply swipe left or right with two fingers on the trackpad.

Open the “Notification Center”. The Notification Center can also be opened with a simple gesture. This is done by sliding two fingers from the right edge of the trackpad to the left.

Drag and drop objects. By moving three fingers across the screen, you can drag an object. To position it, just press or tap on the touchpad. But in the settings «universal access“You can also set up drag and drop with just one finger. To do this, go to apple → System Settings → Universal Access → Mouse and Trackpad → Trackpad Settings. Choose “Activate drag» and then select one of the modes from the popup menu.

Search detectors and data. A three-finger tap on the trackpad will take you to search for a word or action with addresses, dates, phone numbers, and other similar data.

show desktop. To show the desktop, spread your thumb and the other three fingers apart.

Launchpad display. You just have to put your thumb and the other three fingers together to show the Launchpad.

Show Mission Check. To make this element appear on the screen, you just have to slide four fingers up. But on some versions of macOS, this gesture uses three fingers instead of four.

Exposure (displays the windows of all open programs). Swipe down with four fingers to show all the windows of the program in use.

Switch from program to full screen. Swiping the trackpad with four fingers to the left or right lets you navigate between desktops or full-screen programs.

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Apps that add new gestures for your MacBook trackpad or external Magic Trackpad

Third-party apps BetterTouchTool and jitouch make it easy to create new gestures for your MacBook’s trackpad or external Magic Trackpad.

Download BetterTouchTool.
Download jitouch.

How to use the trackpad with Force Touch (push hard)

An important feature of the Force Touch trackpad is its ability to perform a forceful press. This requires more than just pressing on the surface, it also requires additional force to be applied. In this way, you can activate the additional features of some programs, as well as the system functions of your macOS computer.

You can watch a short video about pressing hard in apple → System Settings → Trackpad → Select & tap, then hover over the “Search detectors and data«.

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Examples of using a trackpad with Force Touch ?

Here are some of the more popular uses of Force Touch technology on the Mac:

• Seeks. You can force click on the text of a web page or an email message in the Mail program. This will retrieve additional information about the text taken from the Dictionary, Wikipedia, etc.
• Addresses. By effortlessly clicking on an address, you can see its location on the map.
• events. When you press hard on the dates and events, they will be added to the calendar.
• flight numbers. Pressing hard on the flight number brings up the details of the flight.
• Forecast links. You can effortlessly click a link in the Safari browser or Mail app and see the web page you want in preview format.
• Delivery tracking numbers. If you press hard on the tracking number in Safari or Mail, you’ll see the delivery details in a pop-up window.
• File icons. You can force-press a file’s icon to “Quick View” its contents.
• File names. If you force-click on the file name in the Finder or on the desktop, you will rename the file.
• dock panel. You can force-press a program in the Dock to open the App Exposé tool. This will show all open windows of the selected program.
• Mail. If you press hard on the attachment when writing a new message with an image or PDF attached, the flagging function is activated. It can be used to place a caption above the attached file.
• Messages. You can force-press the conversation text displayed in the sidebar. This allows you to view details and attachments. If you then force-press the contact’s icon in the chat header, you’ll see their contact card in a pop-up window.
• reminders. If you press the reminder hard, you can know the details of it.
• Calendar. Pressing hard on an event brings up details about it. If you press hard on the meeting participant’s icon, their contact card will appear in a pop-up window.
• Marks on the card. You can try to press hard on a point on the map, which will give you a chance to mark it with a pin.
• If the iMovie app’s timeline includes an animated map or globe, you can force-click on it. This will open the styles menu.

In this application, forceful pressure can be used in several ways at once:

– Pressing hard on a region will allow you to change its name.

– If you press hard on a note in the Key Editor or Score Editor, you can delete it.

– Pressing hard on an empty area of ​​a virtual instrument track will create an empty MIDI region.

– Press firmly on an empty area of ​​the drum track to create a drum region.

– Press firmly on an empty audio track region to add an audio file.

– Press hard on the blank area in the Key Editor or Score Editor to add a note.

– You can hard press the region automation area to add automation points to the region boundaries.

– Pressing hard on the region while dragging will help to zoom in on the timeline

– Press firmly below the last track header to bring up the Create Track dialog.

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Other features of the Force Touch trackpad

QuickTime and iMovie. In these apps, you can adjust the rewind speed by pressing hard on the forward and rewind buttons.

iMovie. When stretching a video clip to its full length, the trackpad will vibrate to inform the user that the end of the clip has been reached. When titles are added, you’ll get tactile feedback when the titles appear at the beginning or end of the clip. And weak feedback will be accompanied by guides that appear in the viewport when clips are trimmed.

map scale. By increasing the pressure on the zoom button, you can zoom in and out of the selected map section.

Rotate the map. You may feel a slight jolt when you turn the compass in the Maps program to the north.

In the spotlight. A jolt will be felt when the Spotlight search bar is moved to the standard horizontal or vertical position.

Seeks. When you align forms, text, and other markup elements with each other, you’ll feel a jolt.

To see photos. When you’re scrolling through a photo in an album or a moment in time, you can apply extra pressure to the arrows to switch between photos more quickly.

Rotate the photos. When you rotate a photo after cropping it in the Photo software, you will feel a jolt when the angle of rotation reaches zero degrees.

GarageBand. Follow these steps to feel the impact of the Force Touch trackpad:

• Move the track’s volume slider to the “0 dB” position.
• Moves the track’s pan k**b to the center position.
• Drag the tracks to a new position to change the order of the tracks.
• Moves the edges of the windows to the point where they disappear or appear.
• Moves the boundaries of the track header to the vanishing or spawn point of the header elements.
• Moves the main program window to the point where the control buttons appear or disappear.

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How to change trackpad settings on your MacBook or external Magic Trackpad

You can adjust the required trackpad pressure by following the steps below:

1. Go to the apple menu → System settings.

2. click on «Trackpad».

3. Click on the tab «select and press«.

4. Find the parameter «.pressure force» and move the slider to the desired position. Please note that the click sound changes with the pressure force setting.

It is also possible to disable hard pressing. To do this, uncheck the box «Pressure force and tactile response«. This action will disable all features described in the trackpad settings panel.

The force action examples will only work when the “…” option is enabled.Pressing hard with one finger«. This setting is found in the tab «select and press” in “Search and data recognition«.

If the macOS laptop was released before 2016, you can disable the trackpad click sound there by using the button «silent press«.

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Force Touch trackpad must be on to react to pressure

The Force Touch trackpad does not respond to touch when it is turned off. This is due to the need for energy to provide tactile feedback, analogous to a click. This applies to both the Magic Trackpad 2 and the Force Touch trackpads built into Mac notebooks.

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