Make more of gestures
FORGET THE MENU BAR — USE SWIPES AND GESTURES FOR EASY CONTROL.
ENABLE SECONDARY CLICK
Though there’s only one discernible button on Apple’s trackpads and mice, you can perform a right-click (known as a secondary click) to access contextual menus — enable it in System Preferences. You can turn it on for both kinds of device separately in the Mouse and Trackpad panes. Trackpads offer an alternative option of pressing either their bottom- left or bottom-right corner for a secondary click.
DESKTOP NAVIGATION
Swipe left or right between desktops and fullscreen apps using four fingers on a trackpad or two fingers on a Magic Mouse. Double-tap (lightly) with two fingers on a Magic Mouse or swipe upwards with four fingers on a Trackpad to open Mission Control and switch to another window. Turn on App Exposé in the Trackpad pane and you’ll find that swiping down with four fingers shows windows only from the active app.
DIP OUT OF YOUR APPS
Spread your thumb and three fingers apart on the trackpad to move all your windows out of the way and access the desktop, enabling access to things you’ve saved there. If you need to drag one of those files into an app, press Command and the Mission Control key (also labelled F3 on most Apple keyboards) after you start to do so and your windows will instantly slide back into view.
OPEN LAUNCHPAD
Performing the previous gesture in reverse — pinching your thumb and three fingers together — opens Launchpad, where you can open apps with a single click on their icon, like the Home screen on iOS devices, or you can type to filter the apps and then select one with the arrow keys and Return.
SWIPE THROUGH SAFARI
With two fingers on a trackpad or two on a Magic Mouse, swipe left or right to go backwards or forwards through the pages you’ve visited in Safari. This also works in Chrome, as well as in some document-based apps, such as when viewing PDFs in Preview.
MAKE USE OF FORCE TOUCH
On a trackpad with Force Touch (Magic Trackpad 2 and many, though not all, in MacBooks since 2015), you can apply more pressure past the initial click to pull up extra info about certain items under the pointer. On a file icon, it previews the file’s contents in Quick Look; on an address, it shows its location on a map; and on a word in a web page or Mail message, it shows the definition and may also provide links to a matching Wikipedia page and other online sources. You can apply this to tracking codes and flight numbers to see their progress, too.