BetterTouchTool
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Baffling inconsistencies in OS X Lion Multi-Touch
OS X Lion's new Multi-Touch gestures have switched things up more than any previous version of OS X, and they're brought a lot of confusion with them. While "natural" scrolling is the most obvious change and the one that takes the most getting used to (unless you disable it), other inconsistencies in the way Lion handles Multi-Touch gestures are both more subtle and potentially more baffling. The one that's been tripping me up even after almost two weeks of using Lion is the gestures for going forward and back in Safari and other applications. In Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard, a three-finger swipe would take you backward and forward in any app that supported that gesture, like Apple's Safari, Finder, Preview, iPhoto, Aperture, and even the iTunes Store. Eventually, third-party browsers like Firefox baked in support for these three-finger gestures, and the whole system worked pretty well. OS X Lion introduced a new gesture for forward/back navigation: a two-finger swipe. I actually like this gesture better, because when you're using Safari you get a preview of the next/previous page as you swipe, something that three-finger swiping doesn't provide. It's a very neat trick, but there's a problem: the gesture only works in Safari. No other programs react to this gesture at all. So if you have "Swipe between pages" set to "Scroll left or right with two fingers" in System Preferences, you lose the ability to use gestures to go back and forward in Finder, iPhoto, Aperture, and other apps. Things get even more confusing if you enable "Swipe with two or three fingers" and have natural scrolling enabled. I'll try to explain why with the outline below: Two-finger swipe: natural scrolling disabled Swipe from left to right: Go forward Swipe from right to left: Go back Two-finger swipe: natural scrolling enabled Swipe from left to right: Go back Swipe from right to left: Go forward Three-finger swipe: natural scrolling enabled/disabled makes no difference Swipe from left to right: Go forward Swipe from right to left: Go back You might have already caught on to the inconsistency, but I'll spell it out anyway: If you have natural scrolling enabled and have also enabled swiping with either two or three fingers, the gesture direction is completely reversed depending on the number of fingers you use. The result: brain meltdown. Right now, the only ways around this inconsistency are: Disable natural scrolling Leave three-finger gestures disabled and lose the ability to swipe forward/back in any app other than Safari Set swiping to three fingers only and lose Safari's ability to preview pages as you swipe Reverse the three-finger swipe gesture directions with a third-party app like BetterTouchTool (my personal choice) Live with it, while your muscle memory quietly rebels and plots to overthrow you I'd like to think this inconsistency is something that Apple will address in a future update to Lion, but as it's likely Apple considers three-finger swiping a "legacy" gesture from earlier versions of OS X and only kept it around to placate users who upgraded from Snow Leopard, the company may not bother. A better solution might be to expand the new two-finger gestures to apps other than Safari. In the meantime, using BetterTouchTool to work around the problem has at least stopped my muscle memory from cursing Apple's UI design team fifty times a day.
Customizing a Magic Trackpad using BetterTouchTool
We took a look at BetterTouchTool last year and covered its usage with a Magic Mouse and a MacBook trackpad. As you would expect, this versatile utility can also be used to customize the functionality of the Magic Trackpad. The app features over 50 multi-touch gestures including taps, clicks and swipes for one to five fingers. Each gesture can be customized to perform a wide range of predefined actions or assigned to a custom desktop shortcut. You can even create your own gestures and add button commands (fn, ctrl, command, option) to each one. Besides quadrupling the number of available gestures, these buttons can also be used to prevent accidental activation of a gesture by requiring you to deliberately press a button prior to clicking, tapping or swiping. Gestures and actions are the focus of this application, but it has a few neat tricks up its sleeve that let you snap and resize a window like Windows 7 as well as control the trackpad speed and sensitivity. Combine this tool with a Magic Trackpad and you can supercharge the input methods for your iMac, Mac Pro or Mac mini. If you have a Magic Mouse and a Magic Trackpad, you may want to check out BetterTouchTool. The unique ability of this application to assign actions to tappable hotspots around the perimeter of the trackpad lets you duplicate the functionality of the Magic Mouse and keep all the multi-touch gesture goodness that comes with the Magic Trackpad. BetterTouchTool is available for free from boastr.net. [Via Macworld]
BetterTouchTool makes multi-touch infinitely more useful, for free
We recently covered a utility called MagicPrefs that adds a hatful of new and configurable multi-touch gestures to your Magic Mouse. Well, there's another free utility called BetterTouchTool that works with both trackpads and Magic Mice, providing a huge number of gestures and infinite possibilities for configuration. BetterTouchTool is a fork of the MultiClutch project, built for Snow Leopard and expanding the feature set greatly. It's the work of Andreas Hegenberg (also the author of SecondBar), and it's come a long way since the first alpha version I tested a while back. Aside from improved stability, the interface is one of the elements that's come the farthest. It's now quite easy to start adding gestures such as 'Three Finger Swipe Down' and 'Four Finger Click,' and assign them to predefined actions like 'Show Desktop' or 'Open Finder.' You can also assign any shortcut key you like, or assign a gesture to launch any application ... meaning you can make just about anything happen. BetterTouchTool also has actions available that control window sizing and movement, ala SizeUp, but with gestures. Groups of gestures can be assigned to specific applications, or made global. The latest version includes presets (which you can switch between), import, and export. Separate gestures are available for the trackpad and the Magic Mouse, and the new "Live View" feature makes it very easy to gain precise control over sensitivity settings and to test out gestures. BetterTouchTool is free, and is likely to remain that way, according to the author. It's still got the occasional glitch, but development is rapid and it's improving and expanding almost daily. If you've got a MacBook or MacBook Pro with a multi-touch trackpad, a Magic Mouse, or both, give it a shot!
