This is so much easier than pressing hard on the bottom side of the touchpad why did no one tell me this was a thing 😭😭
Wait until you realize you can smooth scroll with 2 fingers.
The amount of laptop users I see using a mouse to scroll webpages is exhausting. And I don’t mean the mouse wheel, I mean clicking and holding the down arrow in the browser.
Um, that’s in the settings. Does nobody else obsessively adjust every setting when they get a new device? Just me?
Thinkpad nipple gang RISE UP!
Yeah the “guess where the clickable zone is” trend from smartphones turns out to actually not be that good. Multi-touch is a billion times better. There’s a reason it’s the default on Macs.
I really wish they would quit putting physical buttons under touchpads. Separate buttons are actually still useful. Putting them underneath interferes with the use of both the touchpad and the buttons.
Every touchpad I’ve ever used where the whole thing was a physical button, pushing it hard enough to click it would squish my finger skin enough to move the mouse pointer a little.
On tasks as basic as web browsing, where things like hyperlinks are actually quite small on the screen, that was often enough to move the cursor off the link. Or moving a volume slider, the process of letting go of the button would slightly move the cursor.
That’s how you right click on a Macbook.
Learning this the hard way made me feel old :P
And three fingers tapping is often a middle-click or wheel-click, which is often a shortcut for ‘open in new tab’ while browsing the web. On some linux systems it is also a shortcut for paste if in a text input field.
Middle click isn’t a shortcut for paste in Linux, it’s what Unix had before cut-copy-paste was invented.
Highlighted text will be stored in what’s called the Primary Buffer. This is separate from the “clipboard.” Middle clicking in a text entry field will insert the highlighted text. No action needs to be copied. Watch, on a linux system:
Open a GUI text editor. kwrite, gedit, libreoffice, whatever.
Highlight and Ctrl+C this text: This text was stored in the clipboard.
Simply highlight this text: This text was stored in the primary buffer.
click in your text editor and middle click. Then hit enter for a new line, then hit Ctrl+V. Neat, huh?
It’s been on Apple products for a solid 20 years. On the PC side it totally depends on the hardware and drivers to support multi-touch
Every laptop I ever used had this, I’m still bewildered that people don’t know. I actually like touchpads because they give you a bunch of gestures a mouse just can’t
If the ergonomics weren’t complete dog shit I’d still be using the magic mouse to get the best of both worlds.
Such as?
Pinch, three (or four, although I don’t really like them) finger swipes, less awkward edge-gestures (the alternative to which is the “move mouse against display edge”), to name a few
- two finger swipe
- three finger swipe
Pinch zoom is still handy and less so, but occasionally twisting gestures as well.
I still use the fan out gesture to see the desktop after taking screen grabs out of habit too.
Please tell me more about twisting gestures.
Scroll wheel and alt tab?
Your mouse has alt and tab keys?
I wish either my mouse or my numpad had a Tab key. I use a trackball, so I tend not to move my whole arm around the desk, I’ve gotten to where I’ll strike my numpad enter key without lifting my hand off the mouse.
For a lot of things, I wish there was a Tab key on that side of the keyboard.
Yeah, two finger scrolling seems quite universal. Three fingers switch between virtual desktops on my system (Gnome).
It can also trigger overview if done upwards
On kde you need 4 fingers for that instead of 3 for some reason
I’ve that on super/window key, probably faster if you have the key and a flexible thumb.
On macOS you can do all kinds of crazy shit with gestures. Using a mouse feels very obsolete and slows everything way down.
Such as?
Basically anything…they work similar to keyboard shortcuts.
I remember having a four finger click(not tap, that’s a different gesture) to lock my machine when I was using a MacBook at work.
Show/hide desktop, open window manager, open app drawer, scroll in all 4 directions, zoom in and out, you can press and then press harder for more functions sometimes
Pinch to zoom on images and browsers, swiping left and right to go forward or back in a browser, switching virtual desktops
Ctrl+scroll wheel to zoom. Mine had additional buttons for back and forward, some have scroll wheels that can be clicked left and right. Virtual desktop I don’t use so dunno, but I think there’s a quick keyboard shortcut.
Yep, the mouse needs the keyboard for most of those.
You have your hand there pretty much by default. If you’re doing anything you’re using it for shortcuts anyway.
I’m not sure why you’re being down voted. My left hand basically never leaves the home keys in a keyboard / mouse setup and I use various left hand + mouse combos to achieve all these things.
I fucking hate touchpads and if I do use a laptop undocked I’ll generally disable the touchpad when the mouse is plugged in.
They’re useful tricks if there’s no mouse available of course. To each their own I suppose.
Switch desktops? I can’t think of many that a mouse can’t do that I actually use.
Touchpad allows scrolling to the side and zooming without pressing ctrl a single hand
First, two fingers to right click has been on literally every Windows or Linux touchpad enabled device I’ve ever encountered.
Second, three finger for middle click is also a regular thing that has existed on every Windows and Linux device I’ve ever encountered, but to this day takes a third party app to work on macos.
Please don’t act like the company actively hostile to power users is the one doing you favors.
Unix with a solid GUI on top
Automation built into the GUI, with a dedicated language or accessible via the API.
Thousands of third-party utils to tweak the UI, including tons of open-source ones because programmers love Mac for the Unix. Including stuff like Hammerspoon and Alfred, the likes of which Linux users have never seen.
“the company actively hostile to power users”
Apple haters are like a broken record.
Not sure what you’re getting at - it looks like you’re quoting something?
I use mac every day for work, and I do like that it is based on Unix, but the desktop/GUI is a nightmare, and the fact you have to use “thousands of third-party utils to tweak the UI” or use hammerspoon or Alfred instead of having options to do regular shit is a downside, and in corporate settings sometimes people aren’t even able to install 3rd party utils, which case they’re just SoL
the fact you have to use “thousands of third-party utils to tweak the UI”
What, like when you have to have a program or a widget in Linux or Windows to do some UI stuff? Which program might not be there out of the box? Idk why it’s such a difficult concept for Mac haters that when you have an app doing some UI tweaks, it’s the same thing in every OS. Mac UI is just conservative by itself, the same way as some Linux GUIs are barebones — which is somehow paraded as great success by Linuxoids but is looked down upon when Mac is doing it.
or use hammerspoon or Alfred instead of having options
You don’t “have” to use Hammerspoon or Alfred, but you can use them to do advanced stuff. Which you can’t do in Windows or Linux, because there’s nothing quite like these apps there. Alfred has some feeble analogues, while there’s bupkis like Hammerspoon aside from Autohotkey for Windows with its shitty 80s-style language and limited abilities. The fact that there isn’t a Hammerspoon-like app for Linux is a travesty, considering Linux users go on all day long about how it’s customizable and caters to power users. And by the way, if you look at Hammerspoon and Alfred and don’t know why you might want to use them, you’re not a power user.
Man, you are really focused on me being a “mac hater”, despite me indicating I use one every day and am complaining about real issues that I grapple with.
And constructing a strawman about windows/Linux needing 3rd party apps as well is just silly. I did require some way back in windows 7 for some multi desktop stuff, and I’m sure some people with very specific workflows might still want them, but built-in settings get you really far and are good enough for me these days. On windows I have to get WSL or historically mingw or something, but that’s really outside the UI realm and I don’t even use Windows these days anyway.
a strawman about windows/Linux needing 3rd party apps as well is just silly
You’re right here. Windows now needs third-party apps to remove “features”, not to add them. That’s the biggest difference between Windows and Mac these years. As for Linux, it always was and remains a toss-up as to whether the widget you want is installed, so I don’t see the fucking distinction. It’s not like Linux has every widget under the sun installed by default, is it? That would be pure madness.
Again, I invite you to look into Hammerspoon and Alfred for what UI interaction could be like, if you have even the slightest scripting chops. For example, my Android phone could hand off the Bluetooth headphones via the Automate app to the Macbook or vice versa, via drop-down widgets on the phone or a custom command on the laptop. With Linux, I have to kludge up my own endpoints with an Nginx webserver, no less, with barely any desktop APIs available through the command-line.
With KDE connect and probably the GNOME equivalent I can do whatever I want to my computer from my phone.
Again, though, this discussion started talking about things I want settings for that have settings in other OS. I’m sure you can do really cool things with it, but I don’t want to learn a scripting API to be able to do these things on my work computer.
the company actively hostile to power users
He’s out of line, but he’s got a point
T.T
Love the reference.
two fingers to right click has been on literally every Windows or Linux touchpad enabled device I’ve ever encountered.
Sounds like you haven’t been playing with computers very long cause it took almost a decade for Linux and Windows to add that. It wasn’t added till Windows 10, and Linux added synaptics drivers maybe a year before M$.
Like yeah synaptics had drivers or in 2007 ish but it wasn’t on every machine
My Lenovo did all this in 2003.
It’s mostly driven by the brand of touchpad and their drivers, not windows.
Lol you’re just wrong. Typical Apple fanboy
Ah but those Mac trackpads feel so nice. Still wouldn’t choose one over my ThinkPad but I’ve never used one I liked better than that on a Mac.
I think the two finger right button tap has been there on all PC laptops I’ve used since the early 00s, even the lower mid range ones. Most of them have supported two finger scrolling anywhere on the trackpad but a few only did one finger along the edges like the 90s, along with customizable corners and zones and whatnot. Gestures and three finger tap for middle button or other functionality though was random until mid 2010s when it too was widely supported. That is, if we are speaking brand laptops and not junk OEMs or low end garbage.
I’m glad you know it now because its so helpful! These have been around 17 or so years I believe.
Pretty sure my Lenovo had this in 2003, lol.
It depends on the laptop and which touchpad they use.
For people using gnome: you can swipe to the side with 3 fingers to change to other workspaces, and you can swipe down with 3 fingers for the equivalent to pressing the windows button or hitting the hot corner
Three fingers up on GNOME I use a lot when I’m on my laptop. On desktop I’ve bound an extra mouse button to that action that I use a lot also.
Can you sell workspaces to me?
I never understood the benefits compared to just alt-tab
I see the benefit. For example if I have to keep a window open just so it is open. But I don’t need to look at it. For example when opening a VM that I’m going to access via SSH.
In that case it’s useful so it is open but nowhere to be seen.
On the other hand, setting up the thing, and later remembering that I have it in case I want to manually close it is a hassle. So it’s just easier to not use the workspaces and just have it minimized. It’s going to be on the far side of the alt-tab queue anyway.
I never understood the benefits compared to just alt-tab
I use it daily and I would be so pissed if it went away.
I work in IT and often times when I’m working on something (with multiple windows / apps open) somebody knocks at my door or calls my phone or messages me on outlook / teams and needs me to do a thing or help with a problem, which more often than not also means I’ll be opening another X windows / apps.
Many times I just couldn’t find the specific window / app anymore, which I was searching for at this moment, because there were so many things open on my desktop.
Now I have a simple rule: 1 workspace = 1 task
I work on something and have X windows / apps open on a workspace, someone tells me to look at problem X, I instantly switch to a different, empty workspace and use that. It’s like “grouping” windows / apps together. It’s especially helpful because a lot of my tasks run in a browser or terminal and I don’t want to alt-tab through X browser- or terminal-windows just to find the correct one.
Sometimes I look at my colleagues desktop with 30+ windows open on 1 workspace, struggling to find the window he’s looking for and I am sooooo glad I’m not like this anymore. He’s using mac and opening the overview / expose (or whatever you call it) and every window is so tiny, I’m having a hard time making out which is which.
I use them for separating different activities, just as some form of organizing my mind. For example, if I’m writing some document, I keep everything related to it in a workspace. If I need to pause and do something else, I swap to another workspace. But it’s just a personal thing in the end, if you find alt+tab sufficient to organize yourself, it’s fine
I tried it a few times and it didn’t fit well.
A colleague of mine uses it extensively.
In both our cases, it was KDE.
Thinkpads got it right with the physical mouse buttons above the touchpad.
Bring back the nipple! (xkcd 243)
My brand new 2026 Lenovo also has one!
It left? Mine’s got one and it’s fairly recent.
I got a ThinkPad this year with one
Got mine last year I think… A p16s gen3 for reference.
You’re growing nipples?
No, I’m rubbing them😏.
My 2023 Thinkpad has one
I always preferred below since you could then use the thumb to click. Buttons built into the touch surface are worse than not having them at all, however.
You can also three-finger tap the touchpad to perform a middle click.
Not on Mac without a third party application! Just like using a regular fucking mouse normally or using a regular external monitor without it being blurry as fuck!
Just like using a regular fucking mouse normally
Nice, pulling bullshit out of your ass now because you must hate Apple at all times even for invented reasons, otherwise life isn’t worth living.
Scroll wheels? What year is this?
Get yourself a Magic Mouse and don’t look back.
I have ergonomics issues and prefer to use the mouse that doesn’t cause me pain.
Yeah, just as I wrote in another comment, you have the conservative default Mac UI, and you have a plethora of open-source third-party tweaks for it, same as with some Linux GUIs. Mac’s UI is solid and has excellent usability because it doesn’t expose hundreds of options to tweak every possible behavior. I derived no pleasure from wading through Windows’ control panel for hours in search of one or another option that I needed, and to my knowledge KDE’s approach is the same but on meth.
I don’t like Windows either to be clear, and having the settings spread out in different areas is annoying at best, though its defaults are less infuriating and I can get a mostly annoyance-free system with just built-in settings and powertoys.
KDE is great because all I have to do is go through the regular-ass settings app and tweak what I want to get an easily usable system. The fact you think having settings is a bad thing and having to install random software to do common things is insane, but to each their own I suppose.
Ooh, kinky.
Swipe with 2 fingers to scroll. Or scroll using one edge.
Depends on the touchpad
Yes! That one I know because a friend showed me. I really should start RTFM on these things, the QOL improvements are crazy good!
One of my favorite customizations on Mac is enabling three finger drag in the Accessibility settings.
Three finger drag also has some sexy inertia if you hold two fingers on and use the third to flick it
Yeah 3 finger drag is a game changer.
Also I like the ‘control+two finger swipe = zoom’ option in the accessibility settings. Really handy to quickly zoom in and out on something.
