How to Right Click on Your Mac
No matter what kind of Mac you have, whether you use a Magic Mouse or a trackpad, you don’t have a dedicated button for right-clicking. This can be confusing for people new to the Mac—to be fair, it’s confusing for some of us who have used Macs for years. There are actually quite a few ways to right-click on a Mac, so you can choose the one that works best for your workflow:
Two-finger tap (trackpad)
This is the easiest way to right click on your Mac. Simply click or tap the trackpad with two fingers (if you have Point-to-Tap enabled) and a right-click context menu will appear.
Click Right Side (Magic Mouse)
If you have a Magic Mouse, by default you can click the right side of the top of the mouse to right-click. It’s a little confusing because the mouse appears to be made up of a single button, but if you imagine the right side has its own button, you shouldn’t have any problems getting this to work.
If you prefer to have the left side available for right-clicking, you can go to System Settings > Mouse , then next to Secondary Click, select Click Left Side .
Quick keyboard shortcut for right-clicking
If you have trouble pressing the trackpad with two fingers at the same time, you can hold down the Control key on your Mac keyboard and then click with the trackpad or mouse. This was Apple’s popular method for right-clicking back in the day.
Click on the corner of the trackpad
Optionally, you can set one of the bottom corners of the trackpad to be a special right-click area. You can enable this by going to System Settings > Trackpad and selecting the drop-down menu next to Secondary Click . Select Click Bottom Right or Click Bottom Left . You can now click on any of these trackpad corners to right-click on your Mac.
Three finger right click method
Many of us are accustomed to using the two-finger scrolling gesture on the Mac, and this right-click method is a natural extension of that. With two fingers on the trackpad, press your thumb down on the trackpad. This gesture is similar to a two-finger snap, but in certain situations, using your thumb may be more convenient.
Use your mouse
Of course, for a true right-click experience, you can use a mouse with two or more buttons on your Mac. You don’t need to make any changes or customize your mouse: in almost all cases, the right mouse button will work like right-clicking on a Mac.