Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchpad#Operation_and_function

This is so much easier than pressing hard on the bottom side of the touchpad why did no one tell me this was a thing 😭😭

Three fingers is typically---I mean, you can potentially rig a touchpad up for whatever---a middle-click, which isn't a terribly-common operation in Windows, but is in Linux (to insert whatever is in the PRIMARY selection, which is typically text that one has selected), or to scroll something while dragging.

EDIT: IMHO, a touchpad with three physical buttons is preferable to multi-touch, though it costs slightly more. However, aside from some Thinkbook models that have a Synaptics touchpad, it's uncommon as an integrated option in a laptop.

You can get external, USB-connected touchpads that have three physical buttons.

sometimes it does not work but its so much easier I always try it first for a few times.

It's been on Apple products for a solid 20 years. On the PC side it totally depends on the hardware and drivers to support multi-touch

The whatpad now?

That's how I like to do your Mom also.

usually you can also double tap then hold to do a click and drag if you didn't know that

I think the fanfics on that site have been getting worse as of now, might be a matter of taste though.

One of my favorite customizations on Mac is enabling three finger drag in the Accessibility settings.

Wait until you realise you can side scroll, go backwards, change desktop, use the application switcher!

I use a dedicated track pad on my desktop PC instead of a mouse, specifically because of that stuff! Unless you're playing an FPS game or something, mice are just so kludgy and limited by comparison!

Every laptop I ever used had this, I'm still bewildered that people don't know. I actually like touchpads because they give you a bunch of gestures a mouse just can't

Thinkpads got it right with the physical mouse buttons above the touchpad.

Yeah 3 finger drag is a game changer.

Also I like the ‘control+two finger swipe = zoom’ option in the accessibility settings. Really handy to quickly zoom in and out on something.

the company actively hostile to power users

Such as?

He's out of line, but he's got a point

Switch desktops? I can't think of many that a mouse can't do that I actually use.

Pinch to zoom on images and browsers, swiping left and right to go forward or back in a browser, switching virtual desktops

Three fingers for middle click. Four fingers to make it squirt.

Ah but those Mac trackpads feel so nice. Still wouldn’t choose one over my ThinkPad but I’ve never used one I liked better than that on a Mac.

I think the two finger right button tap has been there on all PC laptops I've used since the early 00s, even the lower mid range ones. Most of them have supported two finger scrolling anywhere on the trackpad but a few only did one finger along the edges like the 90s, along with customizable corners and zones and whatnot. Gestures and three finger tap for middle button or other functionality though was random until mid 2010s when it too was widely supported. That is, if we are speaking brand laptops and not junk OEMs or low end garbage.

Ctrl+scroll wheel to zoom. Mine had additional buttons for back and forward, some have scroll wheels that can be clicked left and right. Virtual desktop I don't use so dunno, but I think there's a quick keyboard shortcut.

two fingers to right click has been on literally every Windows or Linux touchpad enabled device I've ever encountered.

Sounds like you haven't been playing with computers very long cause it took almost a decade for Linux and Windows to add that. It wasn't added till Windows 10, and Linux added synaptics drivers maybe a year before M$.

Like yeah synaptics had drivers or in 2007 ish but it wasn't on every machine

I'm glad you know it now because its so helpful! These have been around 17 or so years I believe.

• two finger swipe
• three finger swipe

Pretty sure my Lenovo had this in 2003, lol.

It depends on the laptop and which touchpad they use.

Swipe with 2 fingers to scroll. Or scroll using one edge.

Depends on the touchpad

My Lenovo did all this in 2003.

It's mostly driven by the brand of touchpad and their drivers, not windows.

If the ergonomics weren't complete dog shit I'd still be using the magic mouse to get the best of both worlds.

Yes! That one I know because a friend showed me. I really should start RTFM on these things, the QOL improvements are crazy good!

Bring back the nipple! (xkcd 243)

Scroll wheel and alt tab?

Yeah, two finger scrolling seems quite universal. Three fingers switch between virtual desktops on my system (Gnome).

Yep, the mouse needs the keyboard for most of those.

You have your hand there pretty much by default. If you're doing anything you're using it for shortcuts anyway.

It left? Mine's got one and it's fairly recent.

I always preferred below since you could then use the thumb to click. Buttons built into the touch surface are worse than not having them at all, however.

Love the reference.

On Windows middle click is used primarily for scrolling and tab operations. Linux has a second clipboard mapped there, plus it's more heavily utilized in legacy apps since 80s-90s workstations had mice with three buttons while personal computers didn't have a standardized third button until the wheel mouse became dominant.

You're growing nipples?

Touchpad allows scrolling to the side and zooming without pressing ctrl a single hand

For people using gnome: you can swipe to the side with 3 fingers to change to other workspaces, and you can swipe down with 3 fingers for the equivalent to pressing the windows button or hitting the hot corner

Can you sell workspaces to me?

I never understood the benefits compared to just alt-tab

I use them for separating different activities, just as some form of organizing my mind. For example, if I'm writing some document, I keep everything related to it in a workspace. If I need to pause and do something else, I swap to another workspace. But it's just a personal thing in the end, if you find alt+tab sufficient to organize yourself, it's fine

My 2023 Thinkpad has one

My old lappy had two physical buttons, which were right next to each other. So, if I enabled the option that left-click + right-click = middle-click, then I could just press in the middle where they were divided. I always really liked that, because it didn't take space away from the other buttons.

Unfortunately, probably depends a lot on the build quality, whether you can actually press the buttons on their edges...

Your mouse has alt and tab keys?

On macOS you can do all kinds of crazy shit with gestures. Using a mouse feels very obsolete and slows everything way down.

And three fingers tapping is often a middle-click or wheel-click, which is often a shortcut for 'open in new tab' while browsing the web. On some linux systems it is also a shortcut for paste if in a text input field.