10 Ways To Right Click on a Mac

Right Click on a Mac is referred to as the secondary click and is used to bring up context menus. On an Apple trackpad a two-finger click is how you usually do this, though you can customize it. There are also a variety of other ways to perform a secondary click.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you ten different ways that you can right click on your Mac.
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Now I know a lot of people ask how you can right click on a Mac. It's pretty simple to do but it really depends on which device you've got. Whether you have a trackpad or a mouse and how you have things configured. In addition, there are a ton of different ways to right click using, say, keys on your keyboard if you know where to find these settings. So let's start with the most basic way to right click.
That is using a standard Apple Magic Mouse. In this case all you really need to do is click on the right side of the mouse. Now it can be tricky to get the right spot and, of course, there's a setting where you can change this. So if it is not working for you it is important to check the setting. So we're going to go down in System Settings to Mouse. Going to select that and there are two pages here, Point & Click, and More Gestures. Under Point & Click you're going to look for Secondary Click. So I think this is where a lot of people get tripped up because they are looking for right click or Context Menu. Secondary Click is what it is called here in System Settings. Here it can be set to Off, which is where you might run into trouble and not be able to right click. When you have it set to click right side you can use the mouse and click somewhere. Let me show you what it looks like if I right click on the Desktop here. You can see it brings up a Context Menu. This will happen almost anywhere. Anything that you right click on it is going to bring up a Context Menu with additional commands.
Now there is another option here. You can change to click Left side. So if you want to switch which is the primary click and which is the secondary click you can switch them like that.
How about if you have a trackpad? Well, on a trackpad what you would do instead of right clicking is usually you would click with two fingers at the same time. This is the standard way to bring up a Context Menu or Secondary Click with the Apple Magic Trackpad. But there are settings for this as well. It's under Trackpad and Point & Click, just like with the mouse, and you could see secondary click again, just like with the mouse but you've got some more options here. If you have it set to Click or Tap With Two Fingers then that is the standard way to do it. But you can customize it beyond that. You can go and turn it Off, which may explain why it might not be working for you. But you could also have a Click on a specific part of the trackpad. So, for instance, you can choose click in the bottom right corner and you could see the demonstration up here at the top of where you should click to trigger the right click. You can also choose Bottom Left Corner if you want.
Now there is another way to right click that involves just clicking normally but holding a key down on the keyboard. If you hold the Control Key down, not the Command Key but the Control Key, and you click somewhere, just a regular one finger click on a trackpad or left click on a mouse, it acts just like a right click. I like this method because it's kind of universal. It doesn't matter how you have your mouse or trackpad settings set. It doesn't matter which mouse or trackpad you've got. It will always work. In addition there are even a few rare spots where Control clicking works where a mouse right click or two-finger click on a trackpad won't. So very often I'll just say Control Click somewhere and that will bring up the Context Menu. If you know that Control Click is really right click you can usually right click on the mouse or two-finger click on the trackpad to do it.
Now what about a third party mouse like a cheap mouse like this. It's got a left and right button and how do you configure this to work properly so you right click. Chances are you're not going to have to configure anything. If you use the right side of the mouse it should work as a right click and bring up the Context Menu. But you can go and look in System Settings and look at Mouse and you could see it looks very different now. I'm not using the Apple Magic Mouse. I'm using a third party mouse. So it figures out exactly what options there are and you could see secondary click right here and I can configure it to be the right side or the left side.
Now note if you have a more complex third party mouse, like one of the Logitech mice or a trackball or some very sophisticated pointing device, it probably comes with the software that you install that gives you a ton of different options. So you might be able to figure which button exactly will be the secondary click and maybe even have it change on an app by app basis. So if you're using some third party device make sure you check their support site to see if there is something you should be installing and they should have documentation there on how you to use it.
Now let's look at some more obscure ways how to secondary click on your Mac. You can use a bunch of accessibility options to do it. So I'm going to go to Accessibility here in System Settings. I'm going to go to Motor Control here and go to Pointer Control because the Pointer, that's your mouse or trackpad. One of the Options here is Mouse Keys. Now when you use Mouse Keys basically what you're doing is you are allowing yourself to use the keyboard as the pointing device. So for most keyboards this takes the 7, 8, 9, y, o, j, k, l keys and uses those to allow you to move the pointer around. Which makes it kind of hard to type since you can't use those to type. If you have an extended keyboard, one with a numeric keypad, you can actually use the number keys on the right side to do it which means you can type and control the pointer with the keyboard without much conflict.
Now if you turn On Mouse Keys here then now I can use the keys on my keyboard. I'm going to use the 8 key to go up for instance, and the 2 key to go down on my Numeric Keypad. I can position it anywhere I want using those keys. If I want to click the 5 key in the middle that's the one where I can click, but the Control Key still works just like it does on a mouse or trackpad. So if I hold the Control Key down and press 5 it will bring up the Context Menu because that is basically Control Click. So now I can Control Click with the keyboard. Since I have a Numeric Keypad I can choose the rest of the keyboard normally and Control 5 will right click for me. But if you don't have a numeric keypad and you need to switch back and forth between mouse keys and not using mouse keys note that you can set it to press the Option Key five times to toggle it On and Off. So you can kind of quickly toggle On and Off without having to go to System Settings.
Now another part of the Accessibility Settings you can use is the Alternate Pointer Actions. So we can turn that On and I can click the i button here and you can see that keys can be assigned to be a left click and a right click. By default you should see F12 is a right click. So now that I have this turned On pressing F12 should right click. But you have to use the fn key in some cases. So fn and F12 will do it. You can go into your keyboard settings and toggle how the fn or Globe key works so you can just press F12. You can also reconfigure this. So, I can double click on this here and reassign. I can reassign it to some keys but not others. So it's kind of tricky as to which ones will work.
Now if you go back up to the top level of Accessibility and you go to Keyboard there is something called the Accessibility Keyboard. If you turn that On you get this little keyboard on your screen. You can highly customize what it looks like. How it works and all of that. You can click here to type keys with your pointer if you want including Modifier Keys. So if I click the Control Key here, you can see how the Control Key is now held down. I can use this and then Control and then some other key. But I can also now click somewhere and it will act as if the Control Key was held down and allow me to right click using just the Pointer and left click.
Now another way to right click is to not right click at all. You see when you bring up the Context Menu you get all these different kinds Commands. That is what you're really after. But a lot of these have keyboard shortcuts in the regular menu bar. If you know the keyboard shortcut you don't need to use right click at all. So, for instance, Get Info here is something I can access by right clicking and choosing Get Info. But it is also under File, Get Info, as Command i.
Now there is one more way I want to show you. That's using a third party app. There are lots of third party apps out there that help you customize your Mac and do various things. A lot of them will have functions that will allow you to right click using different controls. As an example I'm going to show you the only one of these that I use which is Keyboard Maestro. I can bring up Keyboard Maestro right here and I can add a new Macro and set this to be right click. I could set the action here to be a click, it is called Move or Click Mouse. I'll add that here. I'll set it to click the right button and I'll set it relative to the current mouse location. So in other words right at the current mouse location. Now I just need to set a trigger. I can set a Hot Key trigger. Now I can use a F19. Now when I go over to the Desktop here and use F19 it is like I right clicked. In addition I could do something else. Like, for instance, there is something called Device Keys. I could set it to be the Control Key on the right side of my keyboard since I seem to always use the Control Key on the left side of the keyboard. I never press the Control Key on the right side. So now I have assigned it by a keyboard maestro macro to now be a right click without having to touch the mouse or trackpad.
So I hope you found this look at all the different ways that you can right click on your Mac useful. Thanks for watching.
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