How to Right-Click on Your Mac

No matter what Mac you have, whether you use a Magic Mouse or trackpad, you don’t have a dedicated right-click button. This can be confusing to people new to the Mac—honestly, it’s confusing to some of us who have used Macs for years. As it happens, there are quite a few ways to right-click on Mac, so you can pick the one that works best for your workflow:

Click with two fingers (trackpad)

This is the simplest way to right-click on your Mac. Just click or tap the trackpad with two fingers (if you have Tap to click enabled) and the right-click context menu will pop up. 

Click right side (Magic Mouse)

If you have a Magic Mouse, by default, you can click the right side of the top portion of the mouse to right-click. It’s a bit confusing since the mouse appears to be all one button, but if you imagine the right side having its own button, you should have no problem getting this to work.

If you’d prefer to make the left side the right-click option, you can go to System Settings > Mouse, then, next to Secondary click, choose Click Left Side.

A quick keyboard shortcut to right-click

If you find it hard to press the trackpad with two fingers at the same time, then you can hold down the Control key on your Mac’s keyboard and then click with the trackpad or a mouse. This was Apple’s go-to method for right-clicking back in the day.

Click a corner of your trackpad

If you prefer, you can set up one of the trackpad’s bottom corners as a dedicated right-click zone. You can enable this by going to System Settings > Trackpad and selecting the drop-down menu next to Secondary click. Select Click in the bottom-right corner or Click in the bottom-left corner. You can now click either of these corners of the trackpad to right-click on your Mac.

The three-finger right-click method

Many of us are used to using the two-finger scroll gesture on the Mac, and this right-click method is a natural extension of that. With two fingers on the trackpad, use your thumb to click the trackpad. It’s a similar gesture to the two-finger click, but you might find using your thumb is more convenient in certain situations.

Use a mouse

Of course, for a true right-click experience, you can use a mouse that has two or more buttons with your Mac. You don’t need to make any changes or configure the mouse: In almost all cases, the right button on the mouse will work as a right-click on the Mac.