this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2026
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Today I Learned

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This is so much easier than pressing hard on the bottom side of the touchpad why did no one tell me this was a thing 😭😭

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[–] jaemo@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 hour ago

Wait until I blow your mind and tell you about 3 finger drag.

[–] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 hours ago

Framework laptops do this. Double finger tap is right click, triple finger tap is middle mouse button

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 17 points 14 hours ago

wait until you find out what happens when you drag your sack across it.

[–] Space_Cowboy92@lemmy.world 9 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Wait until you realize you can smooth scroll with 2 fingers.

The amount of laptop users I see using a mouse to scroll webpages is exhausting. And I don’t mean the mouse wheel, I mean clicking and holding the down arrow in the browser.

[–] Schlemmy@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

I have colleagues that keep dragging the little block in the sidebar.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 24 minutes ago

That is significantly easier, more accurate, and somehow faster than the arrow.

Believe it or not, those scrollbars used to be way bigger, not autohide, and look solid and three dimensional. I miss those days.

[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Hey, sometimes the scroll bar is better. Like when you're looking at a mile-long document and looking for the one part you care about

[–] boonhet@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 hour ago

Ctrl/cmd + f

[–] Ashiette@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 37 minutes ago) (1 children)

Wait until you hear about the key "Next Page"

edit : it is indeed PageDown

[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

My American keyboard has a "page down" key? It's still slower than the scroll bar sometimes. Seriously, sometimes I scroll through a multi-MiB text file.

[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

But the bigger the text file, the more aggressive tiny scroll bar moves become. I can’t see anything if I try to use that method in a document too large. It scrolls too fast.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 24 minutes ago

Options are good.

[–] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 1 points 12 hours ago

tbf, Microsoft keeps fucking with my mouse drivers so the scroll wheel is erratic

[–] some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 11 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

Thinkpad nipple gang RISE UP!

[–] lawks@aussie.zone 2 points 1 hour ago

It's called "the clit".

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Oh man, my first laptop, ~~300 ish MHz thinkpad 600~~ 600 ish MHz thinkpad t20(ish). Man I loved that thing. Bought it with no hard drive, didn't know about bootleg windows, so I learned Linux. DSL, in fact. Those were the days.

Edit:

I've been trying to remember what exactly it was, I noticed the 600 has the drive on the front but mine was definitely on the side.

Best I can tell, I think it was a T20, not a 600. They look very similar.

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Even the "buttonless" trackpad is better, than just fingertapping (I used to have so many misclicks).

[–] Doom@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Um, that's in the settings. Does nobody else obsessively adjust every setting when they get a new device? Just me?

[–] Evil_Incarnate@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 hour ago

I usually read the full manual too

[–] Jarix@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

I even what adjust settings I don't understand m sometimes I learn what it does. Sometimes I don't. I don't always liked making what it does

[–] Sivecano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 16 hours ago

Depends on how you configure it. There are a whole bunch more settings. The options you've discovered are tap-to-click and two fingers for rightclick. See this here: https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/configuration.html

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 6 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah the "guess where the clickable zone is" trend from smartphones turns out to actually not be that good. Multi-touch is a billion times better. There's a reason it's the default on Macs.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

At least on smartphones there's some actual indications where it expects the zone to be. The touchpads with zero markings or boundaries to feel where the zones intended to be 'middle click' or 'right click' is just an absolute rough guess...

[–] zeb420@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

Mac trackpads are sooo fucking nice. I’ve used some very premium windows laptops, but nothing compares to how well Apple does it. Hate to shill, but it’s completely honest

[–] daggermoon@piefed.world 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's how you right click on a Macbook.

[–] boonhet@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 hour ago

Could be others too, depends on the touchpad drivers

[–] sunsofold@lemmy.zip 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And three fingers tapping is often a middle-click or wheel-click, which is often a shortcut for 'open in new tab' while browsing the web. On some linux systems it is also a shortcut for paste if in a text input field.

Middle click isn't a shortcut for paste in Linux, it's what Unix had before cut-copy-paste was invented.

Highlighted text will be stored in what's called the Primary Buffer. This is separate from the "clipboard." Middle clicking in a text entry field will insert the highlighted text. No action needs to be copied. Watch, on a linux system:

Open a GUI text editor. kwrite, gedit, libreoffice, whatever.

Highlight and Ctrl+C this text: This text was stored in the clipboard.

Simply highlight this text: This text was stored in the primary buffer.

click in your text editor and middle click. Then hit enter for a new line, then hit Ctrl+V. Neat, huh?

[–] Curious_Canid@piefed.ca 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I really wish they would quit putting physical buttons under touchpads. Separate buttons are actually still useful. Putting them underneath interferes with the use of both the touchpad and the buttons.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Every touchpad I've ever used where the whole thing was a physical button, pushing it hard enough to click it would squish my finger skin enough to move the mouse pointer a little.

On tasks as basic as web browsing, where things like hyperlinks are actually quite small on the screen, that was often enough to move the cursor off the link. Or moving a volume slider, the process of letting go of the button would slightly move the cursor.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

I like buttons on top of the touchpads, but that really only happens when they feel like they are doing buttons for a trackpoint instead of from the pad.

So still buttons, just not on the very bottom edge.

But even then, they keep deciding the touchpad is good enough to be buttons for the trackpoint, because I suppose people demand as large a trackpad as possible.

[–] Cort@lemmy.world 60 points 1 day ago (23 children)

It's been on Apple products for a solid 20 years. On the PC side it totally depends on the hardware and drivers to support multi-touch

[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 55 points 1 day ago (27 children)

Every laptop I ever used had this, I'm still bewildered that people don't know. I actually like touchpads because they give you a bunch of gestures a mouse just can't

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 11 hours ago

There are some gestures you can perform on a touchpad, but not on a mouse, but KDE on Linux supports mouse gestures as well. I don't think Windows, or even Mac, does though.

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[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm glad you know it now because its so helpful! These have been around 17 or so years I believe.

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