Mac OS X Lion Gestures

by | Apr 27, 2012

If you have a trackpad or a Magic Mouse, you can control your computer’s behavior with  finger “Gestures.” Some are available in OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard, but are greatly enhanced in OSX 10.7 Lion.

Did you ever see “Minority Report” with Tom Cruise, or a TV show where they wave their hands around to control a virtual computer screen floating in the air? It’s pretty much like that, just laying on your table.

Gestures use combinations of two, three, or four fingers swiped or rotated in different directions to perform actions.

For example, two fingers up or down will scroll your window. In Safari, two fingers swiped from left to right is just like pressing the back button!

To learn all the Gestures, open up your System Preferences from the Apple menu, or the gray square with the gears in your Dock. Click on either Trackpad or Mouse, depending on your equipment.

When you move your cursor over each of the Gestures, you’ll see a little movie on the right demonstrating how to use the technique. Some of them allow you to select alternate movements.

I recommend visiting all the Gestures, and seeing which ones are most useful to you. Then start doing practice drills until you build the muscle memory – up, down, up, down. Left, right, left, right.

It took me some practice, and several visits to the Preference pane, to memorize them all.

But now that my hand automatically goes “4 fingers up” to spread out all my windows so I can choose the one I want, my computer is easier to use than ever!

If you have an iMac with an older mouse that doesn’t do Gestures, you can buy a stand-alone trackpad for $69. Well worth it!

About Alicia Katz Pollock

With a Masters in Teaching from Tufts University, a QuickBooks®️ Online Advanced Certification and more than 30 years’ experience in the tech industry, Alicia is passionate about finding creative, practical solutions to complex and everyday tech problems. She also loves a good laugh!

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