How To Middle Click on Laptops
Some laptops allow their users to click a wheel, but most of them do not. In some situations, you need to activate this option through the driver control panel or install those for your laptop.
Contents
Basic gestures
To perform a click with the left mouse button on the touchpad, click on its surface with one finger. To right click the mouse, click on the touchpad with two fingers. To click on the wheel, click on the touchpad (you probably already guessed it) with three fingers. All that we just described is the so-called ideal situation with the touchpad.
In practice, cases with touchpots are quite different. On some touchpads, the above control is activated by default. Some touchpads also have it, but it is deactivated by default and must be turned on manually. However, there are also such touchpads on which the above mentioned control is not even provided.
So try to touch your touchpad with one, two or three fingers to see if it has such functions or not. If you tried and did not give any result, either on your touchpad these functions are disabled, or none at all.
Now we will show you how to activate the function of pressing with three fingers. Accordingly, if you can use it, you can also click on the mouse wheel. The following instructions will be described on the example of the operating system Windwows 10. If you want to use the mouse wheel on the MacBook, you can use the MiddleClick program.
How to activate three-finger gestures?
If the function of pressing with three fingers does not work, then it is worth trying to activate it. There are two methods by which this can be done: via the touchpad driver control panel and through the Precision Touchpad settings in Windows 10. We will disassemble them both, and also give some information to those who do not have advanced touchpads.
For Windows 7 and Windows 10 users without the Precision Touchpad
To find this option, go to “Control Panel” → Hardware and Sound → Mouse. Before you will need to open the parameters of the mouse. Find the “Touchpad” or “Touch Panel” tab in the window. Unfortunately, the next steps are quite difficult to describe, since the settings that you find in the “Touch Panel” tab will differ from each other due to the difference in the models of the touchpad itself.
We can recommend the following: as soon as you enter the Touchpad option, immediately try to find the setting of the action, which you can bind to pressing with three fingers. As soon as you find this option, set that it is responsible for the click with the mouse wheel.
Among other things, your Touchpad can be equipped with buttons that are responsible for the left and right mouse button. Also enter the mouse settings through the Control Panel and look for the option to configure these keys. Some users with the keys on the touchpad manage to configure the pressing of two buttons so that they perform the function of clicking on the mouse wheel.
For Windows users with Precision Touchpad
If you did not find the above Control Panel and you have Windows 10, then there is a solution for you too. If your laptop has a so-called Precision Touchpad, then you can easily use the built-in Windows 10 settings.
Right-click Start and go to “Settings → Devices → Touch Panel”. Go down to the very bottom of this tab and find the section “Gestures with three fingers”. Then click on the drop-down menu “Touch” and select the item “Mouse wheel” from it. By default, this gesture is set to open Kortana in Windows 10.
However, if you do not see the Touchpad Control Panel in the mouse settings on Windows 7, or you do not see any available options in the TouchPad settings in Windows 10, then you may need to install the drivers for the touchpad of your laptop. To do this, go to the manufacturer’s website of your device, go to the downloads or drivers section, find the driver for the touchpad or mouse and install it. After installation, try the above steps again.
For owners of a touchpad without three-finger gestures function
You can try to configure something using the multi-function program AutoHotKey. If you quite often use the wheel while working in Windows, you can try using alternative gestures. For example, quite often a click with a wheel is used when opening new tabs while surfing the network. However, you can simply hold down the Ctrl key, and then click on the link to open a new tab.
