Multi-Touch Gestures

10 Magic Keyboard trackpad gestures all iPad Pro owners should memorize right now

Christian Zibreg / April 29, 2020

iPadOS 13.4 brought the power of Multi-Touch technology to compatible trackpad and mouse devices. It's a new paradigm that gives you another way to use your iPad apart from touch and ink (Apple Pencil). iPadOS supports a few dozen gestures for trackpads and mice, but we've distilled Apple's list down to ten essential gestures for the Magic Keyboard (they work on other trackpads) that all iPad Pro owners should memorize to save time and increase productivity.

Here are all the iPad gestures available with Apple’s Magic Trackpad and Mouse accessories

Christian Zibreg / April 29, 2020

iPad trackpad support in iPadOS 13.4 opens up whole new ways to use your Apple tablet. iPad trackpad and mouse gestures are supported by Apple's Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro, as well as the company's standalone Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse 2 accessories. Follow along with your favorite blog as we teach you about all of the iPad trackpad gestures that are available with the Magic Trackpad 1 and 2, Magic Mouse 2 and third-party mice.

How to customize Mac gestures for your trackpad and mouse

Sandy Writtenhouse / March 16, 2020

Younger people probably don’t remember the days before the trackpad (touchpad) existed. Introduced for laptops in the 90’s, these handy little areas of a keyboard became the norm over time. Trackpads make doing all sorts of things are your computer easier with gestures.

Now you can buy an external trackpad if your computer doesn’t have one. Plus, you can take advantage of gestures with your mouse on Mac too with accessories like Apple’s Magic Mouse.

But similar to keyboard shortcuts, there can almost be too many gestures to remember. And there can be times you can accidentally perform an action you don’t mean to with a gesture.

Your Mac gives you options for customizing the gestures you use with both your trackpad and mouse. This lets you use the ones you want, how you want, and disable the others to avoid accidental actions.

Here, we’ll walk you through how to customize the trackpad and mouse gestures on your Mac.

How to use the new text editing gestures on iPhone and iPad

Sandy Writtenhouse / September 26, 2019

As you may have seen, or even noticed, with iOS 13 and iPadOS came some cool new ways to work with your text. You can now use gestures to select, cut, copy, paste, undo, and redo. Plus, you can easily move the cursor where you want it and scroll faster with scroll bar scrubbing.

So how do all of these new text editing gestures work on iPhone and iPad? We’re here to explain them all.

How to master Apple’s new swipe keyboard

Christian Zibreg / August 16, 2019

Apple's QuickType keyboard on iOS 13 and iPadOS supports gesture typing so you can swipe from one letter to the next in one continuous motion, with Siri intelligence and machine learning making reliable predictions as to what you're trying to type. Follow along to master gestural typing as iDB shows you how to set up and use the new iPhone swipe keyboard.

New to Mac? How to right-click on your Mac

Sandy Writtenhouse / July 14, 2019

If you’ve owned a Mac for years, then this isn’t anything new to you. But there are plenty of Windows users out there making the move to Mac. And one thing you may struggle with as a new Mac user is how to right-click. It sounds simple enough, but there is a difference from Windows to Mac when you need to right-click.

Depending on whether you have a MacBook with a trackpad or an iMac with a Magic Mouse, you have a few ways to perform a right-click on Mac and here’s how.

Boosting iPad productivity with one-fingered app switching & other multitasking gestures

Christian Zibreg / September 27, 2018

For the sake of consistency, iOS supports iPhone X-style multitasking gestures on iPad. With them, you can interact with multiple apps on the Apple tablet by using new gestures in iOS 12 designed to replace the key functions of the incredibly versatile Home button.

iOS 12 brings fast app switching to iPad with the convenient one-finger multitasking gesture

Christian Zibreg / June 11, 2018

iOS 12 turns your iPad into an even better multitasking machine by allowing you to easily cycle through your open apps using a natural and convenient one-finger gesture which augments Apple's existing but unwieldy four-fingered horizontal swipe.

Three finger drag gesture via new MacBook Pro’s trackpad acting up for some users

Christian Zibreg / November 18, 2016

Three finger drag, a productivity-boosting multi-touch trackpad gesture in macOS, isn't working properly for some owners of Apple's new MacBook Pro. Both 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros have larger trackpads than their predecessors, but for many people the gesture doesn't work at all.

For others, three finger drag works only intermittently or performs erroneously when used in one of the sides of the new MacBook Pro's Force Touch trackpad.

iOS 10 tidbit: “Slide to unlock” is gone, say hello to “Press home to unlock”

Christian Zibreg / June 15, 2016

The iPhone's familiar slide-to-unlock gesture was subjected to multiple lawsuits, but the feature itself has barely changed since the handset's inception nearly a decade ago.

With iOS 10, however, Apple has made some plenty significant changes to the Lock screen while introducing a brand new way to get into your phone.

How to get Zephyr-like gestures on iOS 7

Jeff Benjamin / April 16, 2018

MultitaskingGestures is a just released jailbreak tweak that brings Zephyr-like functionality to iPhones running iOS 7. Since it doesn't look like we will see an iOS 7 updated version of Zephyr, developer Hamza Sood has taken the initiative to bring us something similar.

To be clear, MultitaskingGestures is not a 1:1 copy of Zephyr; it brings its own ideas and features to the table, but it's a flattering impersonation of Chpwn's groundbreaking tweak of old. Have a look at our video walkthrough inside to see MultitaskingGestures in action.

Apple patent envisions 3D gestures for iPads

Ed Sutherland / August 21, 2013

Imagine the iPad's touch screen gaining a third dimension, enabling users to extract a 2D image, then manipulate it using new gestures, such as 'pull', 'push' and 'sculpt'. That's the gist of an Apple patent filed in 2012 and published Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Titled 'Working with 3D Objects,' the patent outlines a touch screen interface where users "generate and manipulate 3D objects using 3D gesture inputs." At the core, the technology employs both capacitive touch sensors and proximity sensors in the iDevice screen...