Making It Easier To Drag And Drop On a Mac

If you have difficulty dragging and dropping with a trackpad on your Mac, here are some suggestions. Note that you can drag with one finger or two, so try the both methods. You can also use double-tapping to start a drag, and Drag Lock. Three-finger drag is another option. There are also ways to move things without using drag-and-drop at all.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to make it easier to drag and drop on your Mac. 
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Now one of the basic skills you need to know to use your Mac is Drag and Drop. But I often hear from people that they have trouble with Drag and Drop especially if they are kind of new to using a trackpad. First I want to note that there are at least two ways to use a trackpad to Drag and Drop. One is definitely a little more difficult than the other. That's to use a single finger to do it. Now with just one finger I can click, drag, and drop it here. But that can be a little difficult to do especially if you hit the edge of the trackpad. Let's say I'm over here, I click down and I drag and I hit the edge. I can't go any further. If I were to release it would drop it here. I don't want to drop it there. I want to drop it in the window to the left. For that reason alone you should use two fingers when dragging and dropping on a trackpad. 
So I'm going to use my index finger to move the pointer where I want. In this case over this icon here. I want to drag this file. Then going to click down with my thumb and with my index finger pretty much at the same time although the thumb is usually a little ahead. Then use my index finger to swipe. You can see I can lift my index finger up and put it back down. So with tiny little swipes, barely moving it on the trackpad, I can go from edge to edge pretty easily. Then when it is where I want just lift up my thumb and it will drop there. 
When using a trackpad it's important to distinguish between two different actions. One is a tap. The other is a click. Now a click is when you press down with any single finger and you actually feel the trackpad push back at you. If you're using a much older trackpad it's actually a physical click. But today's trackpads actually just give you haptic feedback. So it's artificial click. But you think you've pressed down. That's different than an actual tap which is just a quick tap on the surface. You're not actually applying any kind of pressure. So you can very easily tap to select things. But if you want to drag you want to click down and feel that pressure under your thumb and then release. 
Understanding the difference between a tap and a click is important if you're going to use these next options which are, in System Preferences, to go to Accessibility and then scroll down to Pointer Control. Then here you'll find Trackpad Options. But before I bring that up I'm going to click the Help button here to bring up Help for this entire System Preference panel here. You could see Trackpad Options right here. Let's go into Trackpad Options so we can see what we're looking at. So there's Enable Dragging which we're going to turn On. There are three options. The first one is Without Drag Lock. What this will do, according to this description, is you can double-tap an item. That's TAP not click. Then drag it without lifting your finger after the second tap. Let's give that a try. Since I've turned that on I can double-tap this item but the important thing to remember is the second tap I don't lift up. Another important thing to remember is a double-tap is fairly quick. If I tap once, twice that is actually not a double-tap. A double-tap is very fast. So like that and now, since I didn't lift my finger up after the second tap, I'm dragging. I'm doing it effortlessly with one finger because I never lifted up after the second tap. Now I can drag it where I want. I still run into the same problem when I get to the edge though. But actually this mode will allow you to quickly lift your finger up and continue. As long as you're fast when you lift your finger up the drag will continue. But if you lift up just a little bit too long the drag ends. 
So if you look here it says, "when you lift your finger, the item stops moving. The item can still be dragged for a fraction of a second (so you can reposition your finger if it's at the edge of the trackpad." So that's what is happening there. As long as you're quick you can swipe with one finger when you hit the edge of the trackpad. 
But now if you switch to With Drag Lock here it behaves a little differently. With Drag Lock you double tap an item the same way and then drag it without lifting your finger after the second tap. Dragging continues when you lift your finger. It stops when you tap the trackpad once. So now that we have set that let's give it a try. I'm going to double-tap very quickly and not lift up after the second tap. I can drag it around but if I lift my finger up the drag it still going on. The drag will continue as long as I don't do another tap. Every time I touch the trackpad I have to move. If I simply touch the trackpad and don't move then it drops. 
Now there is a third option here. Three-finger drag. This means you just use three fingers on the trackpad to drag. It's a very different way. So with that on I'll take three fingers and I'll drag like that. It makes it pretty easy to use. So if none of the other methods work for you, three-finger drag may do the trick. 
Now I want to show you another trick that could eliminate drag and drop altogether for you. Because you can move a file from one place to another without drag and drop. The way to do that is to select the file and then Copy usually with Command C. But let's do Edit, Copy. That doesn't do anything. It's actually not copying the entire contents of the file to the Clipboard. It's just copying basically the information that you've selected this item. Then you go to another location, like this one. Now if you go to Edit, Paste it will create a copy of that item there. We want to move it. So hold the Option key down and Paste changes to Move Item Here. The keyboard shortcut is simply Option Command V. If I do that you can see I was able to move the file from one location to another without using drag and drop at all. So the general idea is to select the file, Command C to copy, go to another location, Option Command V to move. Of course that's not going to help if you're inside of an app like Pages or something and you're moving an object around. This is more for moving files in the Finder.
But in most apps when you can drag something you can also usually use the keyboard to move it as well. So I'm going to add a shape here, just a circle. You can see I can certainly drag this around. But if I just want to use the keyboard with it selected I can usually use the arrow keys to move it one pixel at a time. Almost all apps have the standard keyboard shortcut that Shift with the arrows will move it about ten pixels at a time. So it's fairly easy to actually reposition something using the keyboard rather than having to drag and drop.
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 6 Responses to “Making It Easier To Drag And Drop On a Mac”

Monet Claire

3 years ago

I’m unsuccessful using drag and drop to move phones around in a file. Suggestions?

Gary Rosenzweig

Monet: What do you mean buy "phones arounds in a file?" What type of file, exactly, and which app are you using? What are you trying to move?

OMG, I don't mean "phones" I mean "photos!" Sorry
Monet Claire

Monet: OK, Photos. But still, what are you trying to do? What app are you in and type of document are you working on?

Susianty

2 years ago

Is there any keyboard shortcut (without trackpad) to drag and drop? On Windows we can use F8. Is there anything similar to that on Mac?

Susianty: Sorry, I'm not familiar with how using F8 would simulate a drag-and-drop. Surely one key can't read your mind and know what you want to drag and where you want to drop it? What do you do, exactly? As for using the keyboard to drag and drop, I don't see any way to do that outside of using accessibility functions for those that can't use a mouse or trackpad. But there are ways to get things done with just the keyboard. Can you explain exactly what you are dragging and dropping and what your goal is?

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Making It Easier To Drag And Drop On a Mac

Comments: 6 Responses to “Making It Easier To Drag And Drop On a Mac”

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