Three-finger drag gesture

Three-finger drag gesture

One of the first things that I do on a new OS X install is adjust the trackpad and mouse settings to my liking. I absolutely love using things like tap to click and the three finger drag gesture.

Imagine my horror when I could no longer find the three finger drag gesture as an option in System Preferences. It’s simply no longer in the place where it usually is: System Preferences > Trackpad. Well as it turns out, things aren’t so grim as they at first seemed.

Apple moved the three finger drag gesture option to another location, although the move doesn’t make a lot of sense if you ask me. In this post, I’ll show you how to enable the three finger drag gesture on OS X El Capitan.

How to enable the three finger drag on OS X 10.11

Step 1: Open System Preferences

Step 2: Click Accessibility

Step 3: Click Mouse & Trackpad

Step 4: Click Trackpad Options…

Step 5: Click Enable dragging

Step 6: Select “three finger drag” in the drop down box

Not only does the three finger drag gesture allow you to move around windows and other desktop items, it also allows you to select text. It’s an absolutely instrumental gesture for trackpad users and I honestly have no idea why Apple would have buried the option so deep in its settings.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------