MacOS – How to send the right-click event to a tab-chosen control from an application or service

contextual menukeyboardmacosmouse

This is what I want to achieve: to not need to touch the trackpad/mouse at all.

Why? I'm at least 10x faster on keyboard.

I want to use TAB (or other hotkeys where appropriate) to select a desired GUI element (or select some text in an editor), and then to send the right-click event to it – by virtue of a keyboard shortcut. Without touching the mouse, nor the trackpad.

This shortcut can evoke a service, or an app, daemon, angel, whatever 🙂 I don't care how it's done.

Any ideas? Do you know of any apps that can simulate mouse events?

Best Answer

If you simply want to select GUI elements with keyboard, use Shortcat. It allows you to search all the visible GUI element and select it from your keyboard input.

Another tool you can use to simulate mouse event (such as right click) is Keyboard Maestro. It’s an app to create macro for all kind of events in Mac (from simulating keystrokes, mouse position, and even manipulating clipboard history). You can create almost all kind of interaction with Keyboard Maestro.

By combining those two apps above, you should be able to leave your mouse and trackpad. After all, you are a Keyboard Maestro.

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MacOS – How to map the bottom right Trackpad corner to right-click programmatically

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

MacOS – how to put the two fingers right click(secondary click) on macbook with Mountain Lion

System Preferences > Trackpad > Secondary Click > "Click or tap with two fingers"

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Best Answer

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MacOS – How to map the bottom right Trackpad corner to right-click programmatically

MacOS – how to put the two fingers right click(secondary click) on macbook with Mountain Lion

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