Mac OS X-only: MagicPrefs lets you create custom gestures (and override existing ones) to provide new multitouch functionality to your Apple input devices. It’s like the great Multiclutch, which serves a similar purpose, but with added power and precision that gives you serious control over even the nuances of your gestures. More »
There’s a myriad of options when it comes to setting up your Mac’s mouse or trackpad. The Mouse and Trackpad sections in System Preferences have helpful videos showing you how to use different features, but here’s a guide to getting those settings just right.
One of the most confusing things about a Mac mouse is its lack of physical left and right buttons. Both the Magic Mouse and the Mighty Mouse which preceded it have only one click function, clicking anywhere on the mouse, but it’s possible to set up a secondary or right-click, too.
To enable a right-click, open up Mouse in System Preferences (?>System Preferences) and find the Secondary Click setting. On the Magic Mouse, you can set the secondary click to either be on the right, or the left, for left-handed users. To use the right-click function when it’s turned on, perform your click on the right-hand side (or left, if you set it to left) of the mouse.
You can enable two-finger tap secondary clicking in the System Preferences>Trackpad options. Trackpads also have the option of a one-finger secondary click, where you click in the corner of your choice on the trackpad to perform a secondary click instead of using a two-finger tap.
If you uncheck the option for Secondary Click, then to perform a right click, you will need to hold down Control on the keyboard and click with the mouse. Clicking on the left or right-hand side without holding the Control key will perform a left-click.
Both the Magic Mouse and trackpads have the option to scroll with inertia. This is the effect you see on the iPhone, where flicking makes the scroll carry on after you let go. The option can be found alongside the checkbox for Scroll, which for mice is under the One Finger heading in the relevant Systems Preferences pane, and for trackpads is under Two Fingers.
You can also turn off scrolling altogether, but that would become tiresome after a while, because it means either using the cursor keys to scroll, or dragging the scrollbar on the right of a window. I imagine you’d be turning scrolling back on fairly soon after turning it off.
System Preferences (under either Trackpad or Mouse) also offers the option to turn on Screen Zoom for your input device. By holding one of either Control, Option or Command, depending on your choice in the settings, you can then scroll upwards on your device to zoom in on your screen, and scroll down to zoom back out again. This is great for the visually impaired. There are some other options for Screen Zoom which let you change how the screen moves in relation to the cursor, and turn image smoothing while zoomed on or off.
Navigating Using a Mouse or TrackpadIf you use a Magic Mouse or a trackpad, you can turn on swipe to navigate, which lets you go back and forward in your web history, jump between pages in a Preview document, and much more, depending on which application you’re using. On a mouse, you swipe either left or right with two fingers, and for a trackpad it’s three. There are no settings for swipe to navigate; it’s a simple on or off setting.
If you own an iPhone or iPad, and you like being able to pinch to zoom, and rotate with two fingers, you’ll be happy to hear that the new glass trackpads on MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, as well as the Magic Trackpad, support both these multitouch gestures, and a few more. Each gesture can be turned on and off individually, and additional gestures to choose from include swiping up and down with four fingers to access Exposé and the Application Switcher (??). These gestures are the best thing about Apple’s Magic Trackpad.
These are just the options which Apple has built-in to Macs by default. With an application like MagicPrefs, you can add even more functionality to your mouse or trackpad such as custom gestures other than the Apple specified ones. If you have any other input device-related tips or tricks, feel free to share in the comments.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
Windows only: Feel the Wheel does just two things, but does them very well with a miniscule application size. The utility, sometimes called Feewhee, resizes windows and adjusts their transparency using your mouse wheel. More »
Firefox: Some sites (like IMDB) prevent you from performing certain actions, like right clicking, on their pages. Firefox extension RightToClick disables these scripts, giving you the ability to right click, select text, or perform other actions forbidden by a given web site. More »
Windows 7: Everybody knows that you can right-click any application to launch it as administrator, but what you might not know is there’s an even quicker way you can trigger administrator mode. More »
Mac only: No longer must Mac users move to the keyboard to open links in a new tab—free, open-source app MiddleClick sits in your menu bar and allows you to use 3 fingers to middle click on Apple's multitouch devices. More »
Mac only: Whether you’re using Apple’s new Magic Mouse or a multitouch-capable MacBook, you may be disappointed with the small number of gestures available. BetterTouchTool expands the stock multitouch features by adding gestures and letting you choose what they do.
BetterTouchTool adds tons of new gestures to your mouse such as tapping in the corner, tapping with multiple fingers, swiping in different directions, and, in the case of the Magic Mouse, even pinching and stretching to zoom in and out. Each of these available gestures can be set to correspond to either a keyboard shortcut or a predefined action, such as Exposé or Finder. The developer updates the app extremely often as well, so it’s constantly improving.
BetterTouchTool is a free download, requires Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and either the Magic Mouse or multitouch capable MacBook or MacBook Pro to use. Thanks, PatrickHoulihan!
(The download link is currently broken, a mirror is available here)
Windows only: Most laptop owners have experienced the frustrations of an unpredictable cursor when your wrist grazes the touchpad. Free, open-source utility TouchFreeze disables your touchpad as soon as you start typing, re-enables it when you stop.
Photo by AlishaV
Although you can always go to your Control Panel and then to Mouse Properties to disable your touchpad the long way, it still means you have to turn it back on when you’d like to use it. TouchFreeze makes things a little easier, and as long as you’re not doing any heavy photo editing that might necessitate the simultaneous use of the touch pad and keys, this should be a winner of a program for you.
TouchFreeze sits in your system tray and simply turns off the touchpad when you start typing. It’s a dead simple, free, and open-source program that works with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003/2008, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7.
It's easy to forget about your body's needs when you're deep into your work or the net—until your body offers a painful reminder. Save your physical shell some strain with these cheap, customizable ergonomic workspace upgrades.
Photo by IMG_3771 on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.
Your neck can’t text you to explain how annoying it is to have to keep looking down at your laptop. Over time it will let you know, though, in a nagging, painful way. If your laptop is your day-to-day work machine, elevate it to eye level using any one of a number of clever solutions. Perhaps one among our Top 10 laptop stands will do the trick, or a built-to-fit DIY pipe stand. Any of them are better than imagining yourself as a hunched old man or woman, constantly warning the neighborhood kids to sit up straight and look ahead.
It’s hard to slouch when you’re not in a seat. To help your body benefit from your upright instinct, and give your lower body a break from sitting, work a standing desk into your workspace. You can go for it in a big way, like with this handcrafted setup, stick with something as simple as a $20 model or a surface on a storage rack. If you want to go really fancy, you could try a treadputer or something like this adjustable desk. It doesn't have to be your only desk, either—just a break room for your butt.
How your back, neck, and joints fare over eight hours of work can be influenced by how they spent eight hours in bed. Give your body a better night’s sleep by catching up on Lifehack.org’s pain and posture basics. According to the post, the standard, no-pain position to shoot for is “on your side, knees bent, pillow between the knees, and your head resting on a single pillow,” or on your back with one pillow under your knees and one under your head. You might need to leave out an element or two from that ideal if you’ve got a hard-set sleeping habit, but it’s worth considering a switch-up. Photo by james.thompson. (Original post).
If you’ve stuck with your mouse and keyboard just because your desktop came with them, we feel for you. If you’ve been using a laptop at a desk without an external mouse or keyboard, we’re in tears. Invest in the tools your hands spend thousands of hours on every year by perusing the best mouse recommendations from Lifehacker readers and their ultimate keyboard picks. All of them are designed with a good hand feel and better functionality in mind. Consider your hand comfort worth five cents an hour? You’ll amortize these puppies in no time.
Adam’s had his problems with hand, wrist, and back pain from repetitive stress and other conditions at his workspace, and a few years ago, he decided to set up a healthy, usable workspace to get back in shape. His post is a front-to-back assessment of what healthy working spaces should include, but his basic sitting setup involves keeping your elbows bent near 90 degrees, keeping a mouse comfortably within reach of a keyboard, avoiding slouching, and keeping a monitor at eye level, between 18-28 inches from your face.
You don't have to have Bob-Vila-level woodworking skills to craft your own workspace—after all, college students have been laying doors on cinder blocks for years. To make an actually ergonomic desk from medium-density fibreboard, you need two power tools (your neighbor has them if you don’t), time enough to sketch and plan your cuts, and measurements to know how high you should set up the legs, so your monitor is at eye level and you’ve got just enough room for everything you’re working with. When you’re done, you can paint or stain it whatever color you’d like, and when your friends ask where you got that desk, well, you know the answer. (Original post)
You can do a lot to prevent stress and pain in your hands working at a computer all day, but you’ll almost inevitably have bad days full of overly long hours, and, over the long haul, risk sidling yourself with repetitive strain injury (RSI). Percussionist David Kuckhermann knows a thing or two about repetitive wrist and forearm strain, as does RSI expert Sherry Smith, and they both recommend and demonstrate a few simple exercises that can ward off and heal the effects of working your hands into knots. (Original post)
Are you the type that busts out the tape measure whenever you’re putting anything up on the wall? For setting up your workspace with proper distances and heights between yourself and your computer tools, ergonomic goods firm Ergotron offers an ergonomic workspace planner that, once you enter your height, gives up the details on suggested seat heights, monitor heights and distances, and keyboard shelves. If you’re thinking about working in a standing desk, they’ve got measurements for that, too. (Original post)
It's great that you're dedicated to pushing out this project on time, but unless your deadline's right this hour and you need every second, you should be stepping back occasionally to give your wrists, eyes, and arms a rest—and maybe even read something off-screen, while you're at it. If mental reminders aren't enough, apps like AntiRSI and Timeout for Macs, and Workrave for Windows and Linux, force you, in differing levels of subtlety, to take a break and physically remove your hands from the keyboard every so often. (Original posts: AntiRSI, WorkRave, Time Out)
Eye strain is particularly bad news for those who write (code, copy, or anything else) or assemble things on a computer all day—it hits you right in what feels like your brain, and makes concentration terribly hard. Two simple solutions are to turn on ClearType and increase your monitor refresh rate in Windows systems, or install a serious protection scheme like EyeDefender. Reader’s Digest suggests other easy eye fixes, like keeping your monitor slightly below eye level to bring less glare into your retinas. And simply using a darker desktop theme is often a nice first step toward reducing the amount of time you feel like you’re staring into a flashlight with words written on it.
Windows 7 adds loads of great shortcuts for switching between apps, moving windows around your screen, moving them to another monitor altogether, and much more. Here’s a quick-reference master list of the best new Windows 7 shortcuts.
We’re nuts for keyboard shortcuts here at Lifehacker, and Windows 7 brings a handful of great new ones to add to your muscle memory. It’s also got a few handy mouse-based shortcuts you’d do well to add to your repertoire. So let’s get shortcuttin’.
One of the best changes in Windows 7 is the ability to “snap” windows to the side of the screen, maximize them by dragging to the top of the screen, or even move them to another monitor with a shortcut key. Check out the video for a demonstration of how some of the keys work.
The full list of keyboard shortcuts includes:
You can also interact with windows by dragging them with the mouse:
In Windows 7, using the Windows key along with the numbers 1-9 will let you interact with the applications pinned to the taskbar in those positions – for example, the Windows key + 4 combination would launch Outlook in this example, or Win+Alt+4 can be used to get quick access to the Outlook Jump List from the keyboard.
You can use any of these shortcut combinations to launch the applications in their respective position on the taskbar, or more:
In addition, you can interact with the taskbar using your mouse and a modifier key:
The new hotkey goodness didn't stop with the taskbar and moving windows around—one of the best new hotkeys in Windows 7 is the fact that you can create a new folder with a hotkey. Just open up any Windows Explorer window, hit the Ctrl+Shift+N shortcut key sequence, and you’ll be rewarded with a shiny “New Folder” ready for you to rename.
Here’s a few more interesting hotkeys for you:
The How-To Geek is quickly wearing out the keyboard on his new Windows 7 laptop. His geeky articles can be found daily here on Lifehacker, How-To Geek, and Twitter.
