Hi all.
A couple of quick questions about the trackpad, I'm thinking of getting one.
Do you need to use, is it option-rotor gesture to make it work with Voiceover? Or can you just move around on it and get stuff on the screen?
Is there a way to change that gesture from the rotor to something else? I'm terrible with rotor on the iPhone and I remapped it.
As I understand it, the trackpad works a lot like the touch screen on the iPhone. Are there any major differences to be aware of?
I'm trying to decide whether to spend the money on one of these. I don't know that I'd use it all the time, but I've run into a couple of situations where it might be nice to have something like that. Does it do some of the stuff in specific apps like the phone, e.g. swiping up in Mail to delete?
Basically I'm wondering what it's like to work with one. So if anybody's got anything to say about that, I'd really appreciate hearing your experiences. Do you use it a lot? What kinds of things do you find it really handy for?
It seems to be around $120 or so, depending, so I'd like to figure out if it seems worth it rather than just spending the money and hoping.
Comments
My thoughts
When I first got my Mac I was really struggling with VoiceOver. Someone suggested that it was much easier if you use the trackpad then you can pretend you are using an iPhone. I think I used it a couple of times and it got consigned to the tech drawer of despair. I know some people really like using this but I don’t quite understand why. It doesn’t fundamentally fix any of the Mac’s issues, and it’s just a very slow way to use a computer compared to a keyboard. For me the one thing that did really made my life better was the numpad because you can use it like a VOiceOver remote control.
It is always a lot quicker to press a button than perform a swipe, unless you really struggle with the keyboard.
Anyway someone who actually uses it a lot will likely be more helpful as I know I’ve not really answered your question. This is nothing against anyone who does like using it - whatever works for you is a good thing.
Get One
Even if you only use it 10% of the time, it's a useful one-handed way of navigating some interfaces and web pages. It's also fun and cool. No, it's not going to be like iOS, because the paradigms are completely different; you're going to have to learn a load of gestures for doing things like switching apps and enumerating windows, and using the menu bar. But, yes, even though I have a keyboard with a numpad and agree that it's a superpower, the trackpad is absolutely a nice thing to have. And when you're setting up a Mac without a trackpad or mouse, having one to connect will get you past the splash screen, so it has a practical use too (albeit, one with a much cheaper alternative in any mice you happen to have lying around).
I picked one up, so we'll see.
Well it's showing up tomorrow.
One thing that made me want to get one, and I don't know how much this will help, is WiFi diagnostics. You have to option click on the status menu. I do have a mouse, but when I got it to work once, I had to use either VO-shift-f5 or cmd, forget which, then option click the mouse. That worked once, but the other time I tried it, Voiceover kept saying it couldn't route, or it said WiFi but option click just brought up a menu with remove, no diagnostics to run.
No idea if the trackpad will help with something like that, but I figured it's worth a shot, and I was just curious about what navigating with one would be like. I seem to be hanging on to this Mac Mini and I'm pretty sure when I upgrade I'll upgrade to another Mac Mini, I just get more machine for less money than a Mac Book.
The portability would be nice but the Mini's pretty portable, just don't get a battery. I can probably do most stuff on the phone that I'd do on a laptop, and it's hard to justify the extra price. That's particularly true since I'm doing music, so I want the most memory and such I can get. Mini's just better that way.
I did just turn grouping off to see what that's like, since that's what the phone does. I think I tried it briefly before and can't remember why I turned it back on, so we'll see. I know people like the numpad, but when I started Mac I skipped it because I know the laptop's all have keyboards without it. I'm fine with my tiny keyboard so I figure the trackpad is at least a totally different form of input to try. I don't need it to be like iOS at all, I'm fine with the Mac, I was just curious what the overlap is like, if there is any. I guess I'll start finding out tomorrow.
No it's not the same but sometimes it's the only workaround
It's not a touch screen, and it's objectively very very slow. No, impossible to remap the rotor gesture, at least the default one. You can just add anything with any of the modifiers plus whatever you like on trackpad though. But in some edge cases, it's impossible to navigate some ui element with regular arrow keys / tab or any of the voiceover own navigation methods, and sometimes explore by touch ish can be the only way to roughly see where each element are if properly exposed at that point to VO and double tap on it. You'll notice that the double tap is very slow in of itself and unlike ios we don't (yet) have a double tap timeout option, or it's just by design because it's a trackpad at the end of the day not a touch screen. If you don't have an apple numpad (large magic keyboard basically) then I'd especially recommend everybody to get a trackpad at least. Either way you can't not use touch ID once you've experienced it once on macos so you'd want to get a magic keyboard anyway.
Considerations
Assuming the magic trap pad works identically to the trackpad built into the MacBook, and also assuming that things have not changed too much since macOS Sonoma, here are a couple of niche cases that may or may not benefit you...
With the trackpad set to control VO, double tapping the edges of the trackpad with two fingers give you access to a few items that may be a little easier to work with than the default keyboard hotkeys; such as the left and right edges controlling application chooser and window chooser, or the top and bottom edges allowing access to the menu bar and dock.
With single key quick NAV enabled, and the trackpad controlling VO, you may find it easier to press the H, then swiping up and down to navigate by Headings. Likewise for the other granular controls.
hth. 🙂
Actions rotor via the trackpad
With either an internal or external trackpad, you can rotate two fingers clockwise to turn the rotor, including custom actions, just as you would on iOS and iPadOS.
Workaround for Wireless Diagnostics
If you need to access Wireless Diagnostics but have trouble routing the mouse pointer and Option-Clicking, you can access it in Finder by choosing Go > Go to Folder (or pressing Command-Shift-G), typing "/system/library/coreservices/applications" without the quotes, and pressing Return. This should open a (somewhat buried) folder of system apps, one of which is Wireless Diagnostics.
Note that you can also access this folder by navigating to Macintosh HD > System > Library > CoreServices > Applications, but I personally find typing the file path easier than navigating several levels deep in the system hierarchy.