MacBook Trackpad Gestures: What They Can Do & Best Ones To Use
macOS gestures can do a lot with tapping, swiping and pinching helping to activate Exposé, Mission Control, switch between apps and more.
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Anyone new to a MacBook may not realize that Apple designed special gestures in macOS that are only accessible with a multi-touch trackpad. There are fourteen shortcut actions possible with a touch or swipe of one or more fingers. For example, pinch to zoom works just like it does on an iPhone or iPad. It’s worth mentioning that Apple makes multi-touch trackpads for Mac desktop computers and all of the trackpad gestures that work on the MacBook’s built-in trackpad will provide the same function on a Mac with an added trackpad.
Apple has a long history of focusing on the user interface and this is represented in the icon for the Finder file manager. The ‘Happy Mac’ icon shows a curved human face connecting with a square computer face. Beyond the aesthetic, Apple did the work, researching how to make computers easier to use. The research led the company to Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, where the concept of mouse-based control, facilitated by a graphical user interface, was being tested. In fact, the Xerox Alto, released in the early 1970s, was the first computer to implement this new type of computer interaction, but the price was exorbitant, costing over $30,000. With the first Macintosh computer in 1984, Apple brought this advanced technology to small businesses and professionals at a more affordable $2,500 price.
Apple’s MacBook laptops have multi-touch trackpads, allowing them to detect more than one finger at a time. This isn’t unique to Apple with many laptops having the same ability, but Apple may make better use of the capability than its competitors. In macOS Big Sur, the MacBook recognizes fourteen trackpad gestures. The basics are tap once to click and tap with two fingers to simulate a right mouse-click. Slide two fingers up, down, right or left to scroll in any direction. This works with virtually every modern laptop regardless of manufacturer. Double-tapping with two fingers on a MacBook toggles Smart zoom, which zooms in to hide margins or to focus on a single column of text in web pages and PDFs.
Others include, pinching or spreading two fingers apart to zoom in or out on a page, touching the trackpad with two fingers and angling them to rotate a photo or other item, swiping left or right with two fingers to go forward or back in the browser (and other apps). As well as swiping two fingers to the left from the edge of the trackpad to open notifications (or off the edge to the right to close them). One and two-finger gestures are the most often used, but there are some more advanced functions that are unique to the MacBook.
Special MacBook Trackpad Gestures
Multi-touch trackpad gestures that use three or four fingers have special purposes on a MacBook. Some gestures can be customized in the Settings app to activate with different actions, such as Force Touch, if supported by the trackpad in use. Also, Accessibility settings can change the meaning of gestures. Default settings on most MacBooks use a three-finger tap to activate automatic data detectors on text. This feature recognizes phone numbers, dates, addresses and other data and provides a menu of useful actions. Spreading thumb and three fingers apart on the trackpad will show the Desktop and pinching them together will show Launchpad, where most apps can be found. Swiping with four fingers to the left or right switches between full-screen apps or Spaces when using multiple Desktops. What may be the two most useful four-finger gestures on most MacBooks are sliding up with four fingers to open Mission Control to view Spaces and swiping down to show App Exposé (and all windows of the current app).
As nice as a mouse is, laptop computers typically come with a trackpad. Of course, a mouse can be added to a MacBook, but most won’t have the special trackpad gestures described above. Apple does make a ‘Magic Mouse’ that has a touch-sensitive surface to allow the use of some gestures, but it hasn’t been updated in years and is one of the few Apple products that has proven unpopular. Fans of a mouse may never get used to a trackpad, but it can still be used in combination with a mouse to access the special gestures. Taking a moment to get familiar with the MacBook trackpad gestures will likely not only prove useful, but also save time.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/apple-macbook-trackpad-gestures-explained-best/