Clicking With A Macbook/Pro Touchpad 14

Tip

Clicking With A Macbook/Pro Touchpad

Hey

Many people who by laptops (especially Windows laptops), use the trackpad/touch pad as a means of clicking. By default this is switched off to Mac users, on the flip side it is normally on for Windows users. It is always funny to see a new Mac user trying to click with the touch pad and jabbing there finger ever harder on the touch pad. Thats not the purpose of this story, switching it on is.

To enable you to switch on your touchpad you need to head over to system preferences. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Trackpad. You will notice about half way down an option for turning on clicking.


If you enable the check box named clicking the touch pad will become active and you can start clicking. Underneath this there is a dragging option. I am not 100% sure what this does I had a mess about with it an nothing much happened. If you can tell me in the comments that would be great.

There is one other option that I would like to draw you attention to. This is right clicking. Since Macs have a multi-touch interface they can register more than one input at a time. This means there is a second option for right clicking.

If you don’t have clicking enabled the check box underneath will ask about using two fingers and then clicking the button to right click. If you have clicking enabled this will change so when ever you tap two fingers on the pad any right click menu will appear. I think this is really cool.

There you have it. Clicking with the trackpad is really simple it just involves changing a tick box. I find that many people don’t know about this since it isn’t turned on by default. Many new users where I work ask me about such as features. Finally, there may be more options on a Mac Book Air, since I don’t have one of these I can’t really tell you how it differs.


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14 Responses to “Clicking With A Macbook/Pro Touchpad”

  1. 1

    Thank you so much for this tip. Recently switching from a PC to Mac, this was one of my major frustrations with the macbook. Great tip, thanks for posting!

    Comment By Anonymous on February 23rd, at 11:40 pm

  2. 2

    thank you for this great tip!

    here is how the dragging works… found on mac support site…

    # Select the Dragging checkbox to drag by tapping an item twice and dragging without holding the trackpad button down.
    # Select the Drag Lock checkbox to lock the item to the pointer after you tap it twice for dragging. After you reposition the item, tap the trackpad again to release it.

    Comment By Anonymous on February 24th, at 2:34 am

  3. 3

    Thanks anonymous I didn’t no that.

    Comment By James Powell on February 24th, at 10:29 am

  4. 4

    dude I bought my macbook pro 2 weeks ago and your page helped me ALOT
    thanks so much

    Comment By Anonymous on May 30th, at 7:27 pm

  5. 5

    Here’s the funny thing – the folks at the Apple Store here didn’t know this either; i was jabbing my finger through the touchpad, just as you noted (hee hee) and I asked them about it, wondering if buying a MacBook would quickly become too frustrating…the response was, “No…the touchpads don’t work that way on the MacBooks…” Thanks for the tip!

    Comment By Anonymous on June 13th, at 4:15 am

  6. 6

    Is there anyway to have the third button using trackpad?

    Comment By Anonymous on June 13th, at 10:04 am

  7. 7

    No there isn’t i’m afraid.

    Comment By James Powell on June 13th, at 11:40 am

  8. 8

    Thanks for a useful post =) it gave me faith in the macbook again.

    Comment By anon on September 2nd, at 12:11 am

  9. 9

    Why did you ever lose faith?

    Comment By admin on September 2nd, at 12:12 am

  10. 10

    Thanks a lot for the tip!

    By the way ‘Drag Lock’ option works this way:

    By double clicking and holding touchpad on any window title bar, window can be moved. In order to set the new position, tap again.

    Comment By Mac User on October 16th, at 10:34 am

  11. 11

    “a new Mac user trying to click with the touch pad and jabbing their finger ever harder on the touch pad” Yep, that was me. Thanks for the how-to.

    Comment By John on October 26th, at 2:32 am

  12. 12

    Thanks for the tip on right clicking! Like many others, recently moved from a PC to a Mac myself.
    Using two hands for right clicking was getting very inconvenient.

    btw, I really like the two finger scroll feature on the Mac touchpad. Very intuitive! :)

    Thanks again for the article! Very helpful!

    Comment By Natasha on February 12th, at 3:47 pm

  13. 13

    thanks for the tips, i’m a new macbook owner myself and I’m just playing around with the trackpad now.
    Just found out that swiping to the left or right with three fingers sends safari back a page or forward a page ie. swiping to the left is back, to the right is forward. Loveit! can’t wait to find more :D

    Comment By anon on April 7th, at 1:42 pm

  14. 14

    Three fingers and drag up in firefox goes to the top of a page. Three fingers and drag down… you guessed it. Cool!

    Comment By anon on July 4th, at 4:50 am

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