Mac trackpad gestures cheat sheet: every gesture and the gaps

macOS has around fifteen built-in trackpad gestures, almost all for navigation: one finger to click, two to scroll and right-click, three or four for Mission Control and switching spaces. What it doesn't have is any gesture for volume, brightness, keyboard backlight, media or middle click. Those gaps are where edge gestures, like the ones Slidr adds, fit in without replacing anything.

What are all the built-in Mac trackpad gestures?

From Apple's Use Multi-Touch gestures on Mac page (last updated May 2026). You can see an animation of each in System Settings, Trackpad, and turn them on or off there.

Two notes. Apple says the four-finger gestures use three fingers in some versions of macOS, and you can pick in More Gestures. And Apple's Force Touch article explains that Look up can be either a one-finger Force Click or a three-finger tap, not both. If you ever add a three-finger middle click, keep Look up on Force Click.

What can't the trackpad do on its own?

Look at the table again and notice what's missing. Nothing in it changes:

• volume

• screen brightness, on the built-in display or an external monitor

• keyboard backlight, which newer MacBooks no longer have keys for either

• media playback: play, pause, next track

• app switching in Command-Tab order (Mission Control shows windows, not the recent-apps list)

• middle click

For all of these, macOS sends you to the keyboard's top row, Control Centre, or System Settings. That's fine when your hands are on the keys. It's clumsy when your hand is on the trackpad, and it's worse with a Magic Trackpad at a desk.

How do edge gestures fill the gaps?

Look at how the built-in gestures use the trackpad: they use multiple fingers, or one finger anywhere on the surface. Almost nothing uses a single finger sliding along an edge. That makes the edges a free strip of space, and that's what Slidr uses.

With the bottom or top edge set to Media, double-tap to play or pause and slide right or left to skip tracks. Scrub Video moves 5 seconds per tick and seeks when you lift.

Do edge gestures break the built-in ones?

They're designed not to. Every edge slide and corner double-tap uses one finger, so two-finger scrolling, Notification Centre's two-finger swipe from the right edge, and the three and four-finger gestures all keep working. In Slidr 1.4, a second finger cancels a slide, so scrolling near an edge doesn't nudge your volume.

The three-finger middle click is the one exception that shares a finger count with macOS (the Look up tap), which is why it's off until you turn it on.

To keep accidental triggers down, Slidr adds palm rejection, ignores the edges while you type, and lets you choose Narrow, Standard or Wide edge widths. You can pause it in specific apps, or require a Hold-to-Slide Key. Haptic feedback can be Off, Light, Medium or Strong; it needs a Force Touch trackpad, which Apple says most modern Mac laptops and rechargeable Magic Trackpads have.

How do I set it up?

Install Slidr from the download page, open it, and allow Accessibility access when asked. It runs on macOS 12 or later with a built-in trackpad or a Magic Trackpad, and every setting lives in the Slidr icon in the menu bar. There's a 3-day free trial with no payment or account, then it's $4.99 once for up to 3 Macs. The FAQ covers the rest, and the comparison page explains how it differs from BetterTouchTool and MonitorControl.

Bookmark the first table even if you never install anything. The full-screen swipe and App Exposé are worth learning on their own.