MacBook – spatial map for 2020 MacBook Air track pad’s right-click “sweet-spot”

macbook protrackpadui

I'm migrating from a late 2012 to a new 2020 MacBook air and having difficulty right clicking. Sometimes when I push with the side of my right thumb:

a light touch works perfectly and I feel some haptic feedback or "give" or "click"
it feels solid and unyielding and nothing happens
I feel some haptic feedback or "give" or "click" but it's interpreted as a "left click"

I've try clicking around and making a map manually but I get strange results and I'm thinking there is something more complicated going on that I don't understand. After eight years of using one trackpad it's all in "muscle memory" and I'm struggling now that I have to think about it. I'm so tired of the wrong thing happening that now I'm afraid to right click.

I think if I could see a map of the track pad's sensitivity for right-vs-left click and for haptic-feedback, or better yet some engineering-like testing of their spatial variability, that might help me to interpret what I'm doing wrong and how to improve it.

Best Answer

The options for right-click are configured in System Preferences > Trackpad. You can either initiate a right-lick with two fingers, or in the bottom right or bottom left corners.

I don't know what the default is, so perhaps it's set to use two fingers, and there is no 'sweet spot'. Personally, I prefer using two fingers, as it prevents accidental right-clicks if you happen to be 'in the zone'.

Related Solutions

Trackpad – How to Map Bottom Right Corner to Right-Click

I spent some more time debugging this, and it seems there are multiple setting locations (on multiple hosts) for the same setting.

AFAICT, each user gets his own host. The login screen uses a separate host. It makes sense to enable some settings (like Trackpad tap to click) for both these hosts.

Furthermore, OS X seems to have separate settings for Magic Trackpads and built-in MacBook Trackpads. The commands in my question only enable the Magic Trackpad settings.

Now, I try to enable it everywhere:

# Map bottom right Trackpad corner to right-click
defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad TrackpadCornerSecondaryClick -int 2
defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad TrackpadRightClick -bool true
defaults -currentHost write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.trackpad.trackpadCornerClickBehavior -int 1
defaults -currentHost write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.trackpad.enableSecondaryClick -bool true

Windows – How to right-drag using trackpad only, for Windows on MacBook

You can do this on the Macbook Pro trackpad by pressing down with two fingers hard enough to engage the mechanical "mouse" button built in to the trackpad. Drag your item(s) to the desired destination and then release the pressure off the button and... voila! Windows will display the right drag menu at that point.

Unfortunately this doesn't allow "locked drags" where you can continue dragging long distances by picking your fingers up off the trackpad surface and quickly repositioning them to continue the drag.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Trackpad – How to Map Bottom Right Corner to Right-Click

Windows – How to right-drag using trackpad only, for Windows on MacBook

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