If you have a Multi-touch trackpad on your laptop or use a Magic Trackpad with your desktop, you’re likely aware that it supports a number of gestures to execute a variety of commands. From swiping to scrolling and rotating to clicking, these gestures allow you total control of your screen.
What you may not know about your trackpad is that it is fully customizable. By accessing the Magic Trackpad pane in System Preferences, you can not only discover the different gestures the trackpad supports but also enable and disable gestures as you see fit. Unsure if a gesture is right for you? Just hover your cursor over the name of the gesture and a video will play on the right side of the pane, demonstrating how to execute the gesture and what you will see on your screen.
Here are two examples of how customizing the trackpad can be highly useful. The first is personal. When I began using my new 13” MacBook Pro last summer, I would frequently (as in every few minutes) increase and decrease the font size on webpages in Safari without knowing how I was doing it, which was annoying to say the least. After perusing the gesture videos in System Preferences at the suggestion of a coworker to who I’d expressed my frustration, I realized this was happening due to a habit I’d developed while using my previous computer—a 12” iBook G4, which does not have a Multi-touch trackpad—and carried over to my new computer. When surfing the Internet, I use the fingers on my right hand to scroll and my left to click. Because I had the pinch open and close gesture enabled, I inadvertently executed it any time I simultaneously moved both my hands, which apparently I did often. I immediately disabled the gesture and have not encountered the issue since. Of course, I could alternately have kept the gesture enabled and broken myself of the two-handed browsing method, but I am a creature of habit and decided to go with the easier fix. And, if I ever want to use the gesture in other applications, such as iPhoto, I can easily enable it for that purpose and disable it again when I’m finished.
The second example comes from my experience as a retail associate in Small Dog’s Waitsfield store. When demoing computers, I show customers how to find and set the trackpad preferences. I have found that customers who are switching from PC to Mac are particularly interested to learn about the secondary click gesture that opens a contextual menu, just like right clicking on a two-button mouse would. (The Apple Magic Mouse, which comes with all new iMacs and and is also available separately, supports this gesture as well.) Left-handed users will be pleased to know that secondary click is available on either the right or left bottom corner of the trackpad. Whether they’re left or right handed, customers new to Mac are generally relieved that functions they are familiar with on their PC will be available on their Mac as well.
Part of the joy of being a Mac user is making your machine your own through customization, and the Multi-touch and Magic Trackpads allow for even more personalization. If you haven’t done so already, go ahead and explore the many options available to you. The Magic Trackpad, which connects via Bluetooth wireless technology, can be used with any Mac computer running OS X 10.6.4 or later, so if you aren’t using a Magic Trackpad with your desktop or don’t have a Multi-touch trackpad on your laptop, you can easily get in on the fun by purchasing a Magic Trackpad for just $69.99.