2.22.2010

Multi-touch gestures

Starting from Snow Leopard and on to Mountain Lion, Mac OSX now features multi-touch gestures. Try them out -- it'll help save you time when working with the Macbook:
  • Expose. I can do Expose now just by putting four fingers on the trackpad and dragging all four fingers downward (Expose displays all your active windows by fitting them into the screen).
  • Switching apps: Place four fingers on the trackpad, just like in Expose, but drag left or right. The app switcher will show up as an overlay. Now touch one finger on the trackpad and point to the application you wish to bring up. 
  • Show the desktop. If you have too many apps covering your Desktop, just do the reverse of the Expose gesture (four fingers, drag up). This will push away all your windows to reveal the Desktop.
  • Zooming: I can zoom in and out of pictures, documents, even websites just by using a two-finger pinch. To zoom in, just pinch in and to zoom out, just pinch out. This may not be available to all applications, but just try. I was surprised that it worked on Chrome and Safari.
  • Rotating: to rotate, I just touch the trackpad with two fingers and do a rotate gesture. 
  • Next or previous pages: in Pages or Preview (PDF files), place three fingers on the trackpad and then drag them left to jump to the previous page, or drag right to jump to the next page. In a browser like Chrome, this will jump to the previous or next tab.
  • It also has spaces, which I use to unclutter my desktop. For now, I use only two of the four default workspaces. One for work, one for my to-do lists and Stickies notes.
If you're new to Snow Leopard and your Macbook supports multi-touch gestures, try these. To find out more about gestures and multi-touch commands, click the Apple icon (upper left corner of your screen) > click System Preferences > Trackpad. Hover your mouse pointer over each command to see a video demo videos of the gestures (don't click, just hover). It's faster to learn this way.

If you wish to activate the gesture, put a check on the box. If not, then uncheck the box.

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