TAP Mac OS

Use Multi-Touch gestures on your Mac With a Multi-Touch trackpad or Magic Mouse, you can tap, swipe, pinch, or spread one or more fingers to perform useful actions. Tap The tap networking backend makes use of a tap networking device in the host. It offers very good performance and can be configured to create virtually any type of network topology. Unfortunately, it requires configuration of that network topology in the host which tends to be different depending on the operating system you are using.

With the release of OS X Yosemite, Apple brought an entirely new look to the system – easily its greatest design departure since the ‘Aqua’ interface was brought in a few years ago. However, the changes are not just cosmetic. In fact, there are a ton of new features included in the new system that promise to make using your Mac a faster and more pleasant experience.

Cool Tip: One of the helpful features that OS X Yosemite has is called Dark Mode. Learn about what it is and how to turn it on.

In my opinion though, this is not always the case. In fact, there are a couple of options that I used to rely on in Mavericks that helped me to be a lot more productive – and I wish I had them back.

The first one is being able to use my Macbook’s trackpad to drag any window or item by just double-tapping and holding. This has been replaced by the awful default three-finger tap and hold option.

The other useful feature that was lost in the move is the ability to use the keyboard to interact with the buttons and options shown in dialog boxes.

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You can re-enable both of these of course (which is the whole point of this entry), but strangely enough, these options are not located in intuitive places. Instead, you’ll have to dig around in order to find them.

Let’s take a look at how this can be done.

1. Enable One-Finger Tap & Drag

Step 1: On your Mac, first open the Preferences panel. There, head to the Accessibility option as shown below.

TAP Mac OS

Step 2: On the left panel of the next window, scroll down and select the Mouse & Trackpad option. There, click on the Trackpad Options… button.

TAP Mac OS

This will bring down an options panel.

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Step 3: On this panel, you will notice an interesting option at the bottom named Enable dragging. Check it.

This option not only allows you to enable dragging on your Mac’s trackpad, but also lets you activate or deactivate drag lock (when enabled, this means that when you drag a window, you will have to perform one more click in order to deactivate the drag function).

And done! Now whenever you use your Mac’s trackpad, just double-tap on any ‘draggable’ area of a window to move it around.

2. Using the Keyboard to Select a Button On a Dialog Box

Step 1: Like in our previous tip, you’ll have to open the System Preferences once again to access this option. However, just like before, you will have to dig a bit deeper than expected in order to enable it.

First, start by selecting the Keyboard option.

Once you do, from the different tabs located above, click on Shortcuts.

Step 2: You will notice an option at the bottom of the window named Full Keyboard Access. As you can see, this is precisely the option you need in order to enable full keyboard navigation across the system.

Below, make sure to also select All Controls.

Now, whenever you are shown a dialog box, you will be able to select other options via the Tab or Space keys on your keyboard, making navigation a lot faster.

It is still a mystery to me why Apple made these options so hard to find and enable for the common user. Not only are they extremely useful, but (at least in my humble opinion), they are far better than their OS X Yosemite default alternatives. Thankfully now you know how to re-enable them and can get your productivity back when you do. Enjoy!


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Boot Camp Control Panel User Guide

In Windows on an Intel-based Mac, you can set trackpad options that affect clicking, secondary clicking, dragging, and more. Depending on your trackpad, you see only some of these configuration options.

  1. In Windows on your Mac, click in the right side of the taskbar, click the Boot Camp icon , then choose Boot Camp Control Panel.

  2. If a User Account Control dialog appears, click Yes.

  3. Click Trackpad.

  4. In the One Finger section, select any of the following:

    • Tap to Click: Lets you tap the trackpad to click.

    • Dragging: Lets you move an item by tapping it, then immediately placing your finger on the trackpad and moving your finger.

    • Drag Lock: Lets you tap the trackpad to release an item after dragging it.

    • Secondary Click: Lets you perform a secondary click by placing one finger in a corner of the trackpad and clicking. Choose the corner you want from the pop-up menu.

  5. In the Two Fingers section, select Secondary Click to be able to perform a secondary click by placing two fingers on the trackpad, then clicking.

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