OS X El Capitan: Learn trackpad and mouse gestures
Gestures offer you a smart, intuitive way to work with your Mac. When you use an Apple wireless mouse or trackpad, or a Multi-Touch trackpad on a portable Mac, you can use gestures—such as click, tap, pinch, and swipe—to zoom in on documents, browse through music or webpages, rotate photos, and much more.
With OS X, you’ll enjoy even more fluid and realistic gesture responses, including rubber-band scrolling, zooming, and full-screen swiping. Here are some things you can do with gestures:
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To open Launchpad, pinch closed with four or five fingers.
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To look up a word in Dictionary, add a date to Calendar as a new event, or see a preview of an address in Maps, force click the selected text by pressing firmly until you feel a deeper click, or tap it with three fingers.
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To switch from one full-screen app to another, swipe left or right with three or four fingers.
To see how to perform gestures, customize how gestures work, and set options for your trackpad or mouse, open Trackpad or Mouse preferences.
Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Trackpad preferences or Mouse preferences.
Work with your trackpad
Your trackpad is the most natural way to interact with what’s on your screen. The entire trackpad is a button, so you can click anywhere on it. Pinch to zoom in and out, swipe to flip through photos, rotate to adjust an image, and much more.
If you’re using a Force Touch trackpad, you can force click (press firmly until you feel a deeper click) to preview a file in the Finder, look up a word in Dictionary, add a date to Calendar as a new event, or see an address on a map.
To see how to perform gestures and customize how your trackpad works, use Trackpad preferences.
Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Trackpad.
Work with your wireless trackpad
Magic Trackpad and Magic Trackpad 2 are Multi-Touch trackpads designed to work with your Mac desktop computer. They support a full set of gestures and give you a whole new way to control and interact with what’s on your screen.
Here are some ways you can work with your trackpad:
To scroll in any direction, swipe two fingers along the Multi-Touch surface.
To rotate an image, rotate your thumb and forefinger clockwise or counterclockwise.
To move through pages, swipe left or right with two fingers.
To see how to perform gestures and customize how your trackpad works, use Trackpad preferences.
Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Trackpad.
Work with your wireless mouse
Magic Mouse and Magic Mouse 2 are point-and-click devices that let you click and double-click anywhere on the Multi-Touch surface. The Multi-Touch area covers the whole surface of the mouse, and the mouse itself is the button. Scroll in any direction with one finger, swipe through webpages and photos with two fingers, and click or double-click anywhere.
Here are some ways you can work with your Apple wireless mouse:
To scroll in any direction or pan 360 degrees, move one finger along the mouse surface.
To move through pages in Safari or browse photos, use two fingers to swipe left or right.
To see how to perform gestures and customize how your mouse works, use Mouse preferences.
Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Mouse.