Right Click On a MacBook Trackpad

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you the different ways that you could right click on a trackpad on a Mac. 

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Now you may know that there are two ways to click on computers. There's the primary click, also known as just the regular click or left click. But there is also a secondary click usually called a right click. On say a windows computer you might  have a mouse and that may actually have a right and left mouse button so it's pretty clear that the right click is to click on the right button. But Macs don't have left and right buttons. In fact Apple mice don't even have any buttons at all. You just click on the whole surface of the mouse. Trackpads, of course, you just click wherever it is your finger happens to be. This is just a regular click also known as a left click. So if you've got a trackpad how do you right click? 

Well first let's take a look at what a right click actually is. So let's say I'm here in the Finder and I want to select a file. I would just do a regular click, or a left click, to select a file, like that. If I want to select another file I would click that. But on a Mac if you want to right click or the correct term would be a secondary click you would be doing something different. You wouldn't be just selecting the file but you actually would be bringing up a Context Menu here. So this is for this file here. But if I did it, say, for the Desktop if I right clicked or secondary click on the Desktop you can see it brings up a Context Menu that has to do with what I've clicked on, the Desktop. 

The Context Menu is the case in most situations. For instance here I am in Pages. If I use the secondary click here, and you can see I secondary clicked on this word, it didn't just select the word. It actually brought up this Context Menu with different things I could do with this object. Here I am in Numbers and if I were to do a secondary click on this cell you can see it brings up a Context Menu there. Here I am in Photos and a secondary click on a photo also brings up a Context Menu.

Now not all apps use the secondary click for Context Menu. For instance a game may assign a different action for a secondary or right click than it would for a regular click. How do you do the secondary click on a Mac Trackpad if there are no buttons? There is no left button for a left click and right button for a right click. You just press down with your finger anywhere on the trackpad and that seems to do a regular or left click. So the default way to do it, and it is probably setup this way on your Mac, is to instead of using one finger to click use two fingers to click. So if I click with one finger I get the left click. If I click with two fingers I get the right click. You can see this if you go to the Apple Menu and then System Settings. Then scroll down on the left side until you find Trackpad.

The trackpad is going to have different options depending upon which trackpad you've got. I'm using the Magic Trackpad connected to my Mac Studio. You might be using the trackpad on your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, but older models will have different capabilities. So what you see here for each of these three sections is going to be different depending upon your hardware. But under Point & Click, the first tab here, you should see Secondary Click. That's the official name. After all since Mac's never really had mice with buttons calling it right click wouldn't make any sense. There's never been any such thing as a right mouse button, really, on a Mac. You can see here it's set, by default, to click with two fingers. But you have Options. 

You can select it and you could have it be a click in the bottom right corner or a click in the bottom left corner. So if you prefer to have those then you can switch it. Whichever one you choose while you have your pointer over this item here you're going to actually see a demonstration there at the top. So you can see the two blue circles indicating two fingers clicking at the same time on the trackpad. But there are even more options than that. On modern trackpads you have the option to Tap to Click. If you turn that On instead of having to press down with one finger for a click you can lightly tap it. A quick little tap will act as a click. When you do that notice that it also changes the options for secondary click. Now you can see it's click and tap with two fingers instead of just click with two fingers. 

Notice also that one of the options here is All. So why would you want to turn this Off. Well, it could be because, maybe, you've often accidentally use the secondary click and you just want to have it Off so it never triggers. But if you do have it Off how is there a way to access these Context Menus? Well you can do it by using a modifier key on the keyboard. If you hold the Control Key down and then do a regular click with one finger it will change that click to a secondary click. So holding the Control Key down, keep in mind it's the Control Key not the Command key, you can do a regular click and it acts like you are clicking with two fingers. 

This is true in 99% of cases. Although occasionally there are some things where a Control click doesn't work as a secondary click. So keep that in mind if it is not working it might be one of those cases. 

Now there is another option to secondary click. You can actually use a key on the keyboard. Now this is an Accessibility function so you normally wouldn't want to use this. But if those other options aren't going to work for you then you can try it. So go into System Settings and go to Accessibility. Then go down to Motor and then Pointer Control. Then look for Alternate Pointer Actions. If you click on the i button next to it you can see that you can configure a key to work as the left click and the right click. By default these are F11 and F12. So let's go and try that by turning this On. So now if I were to move over here to the Desktop I could use two fingers on my trackpad and bring up the Context Menu. I could use Control and then a regular click to bring up the Context Menu. But I could also use F12 to do it. Now you may have to use the fn or Globe Key to make F12 the actual F12 key. I've got it set so that F12 is volume up, so it is a feature key not a function key. So fn and F12 that brings up the Context Menu. To change how that works you can go to Keyboard in System Settings and then when you're there go to Keyboard Shortcuts, look for Function Keys and then turn this On. Now F12 will act as the F12 key, not volume up. If I want to do volume up then I would hold down the fn or Globe Key to turn this into the volume up key. 

So there you go. For most people it is just a matter of using two fingers on the trackpad to right click. But you can also Control and single finger click on the trackpad or change the Options in System Settings, Trackpad. 

Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.