Mastering your Chromebook’s trackpad gestures [VIDEO]

Chromebooks are designed to be easy to understand and navigate. A large part of that navigation resides on the powerful and flexible trackpad that is just below your Chromebook’s keyboard. This input method wields a lot of power over Chrome OS, but just because Chromebooks are meant to be streamlined, computers simplified, it doesn’t mean that they come entirely without a learning curve. With that in mind, we wanted to create a quick and simple guide to all the things you can do with your Chromebook’s built-in trackpad.

Before we start, a quick note about the settings. In your device’s settings menu, you can go to settings> device> touchpad (or mouse and touchpad if you have a mouse connected) and you can decide to activate the touch scroll to click, touch and drag and rewind. For this post and video, you just need to know that a touch on the trackpad or a physical click on the trackpad means the same thing and both work if the option is enabled. Reverse scrolling is also an option, depending on what seems natural to you, but I leave it on because I like the screen content to move in the same direction as my fingers when scrolling as we are used to on phones and tablets. Now, let’s dive in.

One finger gestures

As you would expect, the gestures of a finger are quite simple. With a finger on the trackpad, you can move the mouse cursor around the screen and Select items such as applications, web links and system settings. In addition, you can click to open windows and drag them across the screen with a physical click and drag or double tap and drag if you have touch options enabled.

Two-finger gestures

As we add another digit, the gestures become a little more complex. With two fingers on the trackpad, the most useful gesture is definitely the scrolling motion. Depending on the reverse scrolling setting mentioned earlier, the behavior of this gesture may vary. Anyway, however, placing two fingers on the trackpad and moving in any direction will move the content on the screen, as long as it is scrollable. Take this post you are reading, for example. With two fingers on the trackpad, you can swipe up and down to move content easily.

In addition, with two fingers you can perform a pinch-zoom movement which will extend web content and other application content, where allowed. With enlarged content, two-finger scrolling is useful for moving it across the screen in any direction to see enlarged content: up, down, left or right.

Finally, with two-finger clicks or taps, you can open a context menu similar to a right click on Windows or a long press on Android / iOS. The contents of the context menu will differ from application to application, but if you are looking for extra options, it is always worth tapping / clicking with two fingers to see if any extra items are hidden under the surface.

A bonus move that still works only on Chrome and web apps (not Android apps) is to swipe left / right two fingers to move forward / backward across web content. It is a useful trick that we left out of the video, as it does not work across the system.

Three finger gestures

By moving to three-finger gestures, things get even more complex. These gestures are more about multitasking productivity and seem more like additions than requirements. First we have cleaning the guide. The idea here is simple: when in Chrome and you have tabs open at the top, you can swipe three fingers left or right and move around those tabs effortlessly. It is extremely useful and a feature that you will definitely miss if you get used to it and return to a Windows or Mac laptop.

The next is the overview mode. While there is a dedicated keyboard key for this on Chromebooks, swiping up with three fingers is much faster in my opinion. With this gesture, you can invoke the overview mode and see all open windows at once on the desktop. If you have a lot going on or can’t find the window you need, this is very practical and a gesture that I use over and over again in everyday life.

Finally, with the same three fingers, you can perform a click that will close any tab you are passing. If you need to quickly turn off a handful of open tabs in Chrome, a three-finger click will close any tab you’re swiping, without having to place your cursor directly over the small X at the top. It looks small, but this gesture is very useful.

Four finger gestures

Finally, we have our final four-finger gesture. With the overview mode mentioned above, you can create virtual Desks that allow you to configure three additional workspaces. Think of it as having three extra monitors virtually on your Chromebook. When you have these assets and are ready to move from one to the other, there are keyboard shortcuts and the ability to click on tables from overview mode, but by far the most satisfying method is to slide four fingers to the left or to the right. the trackpad.

With this quick gesture, you can move seamlessly from one workspace to another with a flick of the wrist. There is even work being done to make animations faster and transitions between your table smoother. As this will come to Chrome OS in the next updates, the four-finger gesture to switch tables will be as beneficial as ever.

Then that’s it! Take these gestures and you’ll be a master on the Chromebook trackpad in no time. While many of them are fun to do, most of them are also useful. You will be much more productive and agile when browsing the operating system if you know these shortcuts like the back of your hand. Not many, so I strongly recommend recording them in memory, using them often and doing more in less time than you do.