How Different Trackpad Settings Can Save You Time

By Jonah Cohen, Published May 21st, 2021

Trackpads replace using a physical mouse to control the computer and add more functionality like portability and executing more tasks easily. Instead of tracking where it is moved, like a mouse does, it tracks where the user’s finger moves and moves the cursor in the same way. There are also custom gestures that can control the desktop environment.

The hardware behind a trackpad is something that we also see on smartphones. They use a capacitive touch sensor combined with one or two tactile buttons. The capacitive touch sensor tracks where the cursor should go on the screen while the button acts as a click. Most of the time, the tactile button is under the touchpad.

The trackpad makes using a computer very simple. You simply move the cursor in the direction you want it to go. Since trackpads can’t be the size of the screen, one usually has to pick up their finger and place it back in a new spot to move the cursor. Sometimes the tap to click setting can cause some problems with misclicks. It functions as intended, but while moving the cursor across the screen, you could accidentally click something you were not trying to.

Other people prefer to turn this feature off. In settings under the trackpad features, there should be an option to either enable or disable tap to click (device dependent). To change the setting, just disable the “enable tap to click” or enable “disable tap to click”. After that, misclicks will be way less common.

This is really helpful to me. As someone who works very fast on a computer, having the ability to move my finger quickly across the trackpad several times to get to where I need to go, really allows me to be as efficient as possible. This is helpful because I won’t accidentally trigger a tap to click which will potentially change what I am doing, even when I don’t want to. This is something great to try out for a little and always turn off if you don’t like it.

If you don’t feel comfortable with turning off tap to click, you could also raise your trackpad sensitivity so the cursor moves faster. This is a great alternative way to avoid misclicks because you have to raise and lower your finger less which reduces the potential number of times a misclick can occur. This can make it harder to control your cursor, but if tuned correctly, can also work as a suitable fix for some people.