How to use MacBook trackpad gestures

How to use MacBook trackpad gestures

There are tonnes of multitouch gestures built into your MacBook's touchpad. In this article we list the ones you need to know. These are the ones everyone should know, and are essential to controlling a MacBook via trackpad (as opposed to the occasionally handy option). A trackpad acts like a mouse in most respects, but the trackpads on MacBooks don't have buttons. Instead, you just tap anywhere on the trackpad with one finger to do a left-click, and tap (or click) with two fingers at once to do a right-click.

You can actually do a click with three fingers at once, which performs the same actions you'd get with a hard-press on a : looking up definitions of words and so on. You can scroll up and down (in websites, text documents and similar) by swiping up and down with two fingers. You can zoom in and out by pinching and un-inching, just as you would do on an iPhone or an iPad. But there's also a gesture called smart zoom, performed by double-tapping with two fingers. This zooms right into or right back out of a web page or pdf. In certain apps photo editing apps and the like you can rotate images by making a rotating motion with two fingers (or more likely a finger and thumb). Again, this matches the gesture you'll know from iOS.

Without wishing to sound like a clickbait headline, most people don't know about these gesture controls (you'll believe number 3!) but they're incredibly handy tools to add to your repertoire. Swipe in from the lefthand edge of the trackpad with two fingers and you'll make Notification Centre pop up. Make it go away again by swiping back in the opposite direction. Similarly, you can easily make Mission Control and Launchpad pop up with relatively simple gestures. Swipe up with four fingers (or occasionally three, depending on the version of macOS you're using experiment) to bring up Mission Control.

Launchpad can be summoned by doing a pinching action with your thumb and three fingers. The classic F3 and Cmd-F3 actions most Mac users depend upon can also be conjured up with trackpad gestures. Activate Expos which shows all open windows for ease of navigation by swiping down with four fingers. Again, in certain versions of macOS three fingers will be enough. To show the desktop (with all windows whisked temporarily away, so you can easily grab a file from the desktop or drag one to it), do an 'unpinch' motion with your thumb and three fingers have them clumped together on the trackpad and then move them apart.