MacBook – How to increase “tracking speed” beyond the maximum

macmacbook propreferencestrackpad

For a Macbook Pro, I've set trackpad settings for Three Fingers to "Dragging":

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However the tracking speed is too slow, and often it's impossible to drag for a larger distance due to the size of the physical trackpad.

How do we increase the tracking speed beyond the maximum allowed?

Best Answer

BetterTouchTool does that, and lets you add application specific gestures as well!

I don't think I could use a mac without it, at this point. I have my browser-tab-management and finder shortcuts mapped to multitouch gestures.

Related Solutions

MacOS – What’s the difference between one finger dragging and drag lock

I believe I figured out the difference:

Dragging:

Double tap and hold to begin dragging.
Release the mouse.
Depending on the amount of time that has passed, moving the mouse will do one of the following:
- Brief delay: moving the mouse continues the dragging, essentially behaving the exact same way as drag lock. The cycle is then repeated once you release your finger.
- Longer delay: dragging is stopped.

Dragging & Drag Lock:

Double tap and hold to begin dragging.
Release the mouse.
Moving the mouse will continue dragging.
Tap once to stop the dragging.

It's that brief delay that was throwing me off. There doesn't seem to be any way to customize the length of this delay. One thing that does help, though, is figuring out exactly how long this delay is. One method for figuring this out is the following:

Drag an icon from the dock a tiny bit so that if you were to release it, it wouldn't be deleted.
Release the mouse.
Observe how long it takes for the icon to move back to its place. That is the exact amount of minimum time that you should wait when you are finished dragging something.

MacOS – Enabling both trackpad Drag Lock and 3 Finger Drag at once

On OS X El Capitan 10.11.1, the following terminal commands seem to solve it for me on the Magic Trackpad (on the built in trackpad I can operate only one dragging mechanic at a time) :

# Enable "tap-and-a-half" to drag.
defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad Dragging -int 1
defaults write com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad Dragging -int 1


# Enable 3-finger drag. (Moving with 3 fingers in any window "chrome" moves the window.)
defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad TrackpadThreeFingerDrag -bool true
defaults write com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad TrackpadThreeFingerDrag -bool true

source: https://github.com/boochtek/mac_config/blob/master/trackpad.sh

Update: dug up a bit more and found the "tap behavior" mouse defaults entry, which requires the "2" preset in order to get "tap to drag" on the built in trackpad

defaults -currentHost write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.mouse.tapBehavior -int 2
defaults write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.mouse.tapBehavior -int 2

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – What’s the difference between one finger dragging and drag lock

MacOS – Enabling both trackpad Drag Lock and 3 Finger Drag at once

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