4 ms·
I haven't used a mouse for 14 years
- bigyabai 8mo agoAnecdotal, but I haven't used my Magic Trackpad 2 since I bought a trackball (Kensington Expert Wireless). Removes all the same wrist strain issues while retaining flick accuracy of a mouse.
- RobotToaster 8mo ago+1 on trackballs, I use a sanwa gravi myself
- pimlottc 8mo agoLogitech MX Ergo fan here!
- thebrain 8mo agoThis is the best. I use it for work as well.
- dewey 8mo agoI love the Magic Trackpad and I've used exclusively for years, at some point my wrists start to hurt and I'm now stuck with some Logitech MX Vertical.
- JojoFatsani 8mo agoI can't use the trackpad for too long without getting RSI type feelings.. I am trackball these days.
- swiftcoder 8mo agoI'm in much the same boat. Daily Apple trackpad driver for the past 15 years at least, maybe more. Every time I have to use a PC with a mouse it kills me a little (and don't get me started on those trackpads cheap PC laptops ship with...)
- krunck 8mo agoI despise trackpads. They feel so sloppy and approximate. Mice work great for my needs. But the best laptop pointer for me has been the pointing stick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick
- mikestew 8mo agoI despise trackpads. And yet I'll use nothing else. Conversely, I have never gotten along with pointy sticks, all the way back to the original 1993 Toshiba Portégé[0] despite their apparent popularity. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook_Portégé https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook_Portégé
- kaypro 8mo agoYou have me beat by two years and I never knew about the three fingers drag. Great find... thanks!
- mikestew 8mo agoI don't know, does a trackpad count? In one sense, no, it's not a mouse. In which case, I guess I'm in the same boat. I don't know if I even have any mice in the house anymore. OTOH, I thought this might be a post from a keyboard shortcut wizard.
- tejohnso 8mo agoI haven't used a mouse in ages, but I haven't used a trackpad - ever. I've never found one that matches the accuracy, speed, and overall joy of using TrackPoint to move the mouse cursor.
- nine_k 8mo agoI love trackpoint for navigation and UI control. But it's not that great for drawing / painting (even though I did use it for that, successfully).
- D13Fd 8mo agoYeah it’s really a shame that the track point wasn’t adopted globally (I’m assuming for patent reasons, but surely any patents must be expired by now). For years I used a Trackpoint external keyboard plus a mouse. The track point is great for small movements when you’re primarily typing, and the mouse is great for when you are primarily moving the cursor.
- zabzonk 8mo agoOne of my favourite features on my Asus Zenbook (Windows) is the "Disable Touchpad" hotkey.
- JoshTriplett 8mo agoI spend most of my time using a ThinkPad laptop touchpad, but the critical property that makes it usable for me is the physical mouse buttons. I find it incredibly awkward to use any system without physical mouse buttons, or any system where tap-to-click has not been disabled. I tried, on my current laptop, to see if I could get used to having tap-to-click enabled even without actually using it; I wanted to see how far off I was from being able to deal with any non-ThinkPad. I ended up turning it back off after a few days, after many many clicks I didn't want to click.
- D13Fd 8mo agoMy wife feels the same way as you. I guess everyone is different. To me, tap-to-click and two-finger right click feel the best by far.
- vladvasiliu 8mo agoWhy do you find this better? I find it awkward to have to contort my hand to hold the button down when dragging around. This was already the case with older trackpads with the buttons below, but now all trackpads with physical buttons I've seen have them above (probably intended for the trackpoint). I really hate the hinge-style trackpads, but even on macs, I always enable tap to click and double-tap-drap to hold. On mac os and linux you can enable a "persistent hold for a short while" which allows to lift your finger briefly without losing the hold. Never found a similar setting on windows, which drives me crazy whenever I absolutely have to use that os.
- JoshTriplett 8mo ago> This was already the case with older trackpads with the buttons below, but now all trackpads with physical buttons I've seen have them above (probably intended for the trackpoint). I think they're officially intended for the trackpoint, yes. But I find buttons-above convenient, because if I rest my arm/hand in a relaxed fashion on the laptop palm rest, I can use my pointer or middle finger for precise movement, and click with my middle or ring finger. That said, I'd take buttons-below over no buttons. With buttons-below, I'm using my middle finger to mouse and my pointer finger to click, and that's still reasonably comfortable. In both cases, I find it better because: clicking the button requires a deliberate action that won't happen by accident while using the touchpad; there's no delay required to confirm if touching the touchpad is a click something else, it's never a click; there's nothing timing-based at all, motion is motion and clicking is clicking; right-click and middle-click have dedicated buttons (I probably use middle-click many times more often than right-click on any given day, to open links in tabs and to close tabs). This isn't something that could be solved with a better touchpad or better software.
- veilrap 8mo agoI exclusively use trackpads like Magic Trackpad 2 when I'm on MacOS. But I exclusively use a mouse when I'm running Windows and Linux. MacOS just seems more tailored to the touchpad experience. Windows and Linux more tailored to the mouse experience.
- seabrookmx 8mo agoModern GNOME distros (Ubuntu and Fedora when running Wayland, for example) work pretty well with a trackpad. You get all the usual Mac-style gestures: two finger scrolling, pinch to zoom, three finger horizontal swipe for workspaces, three finger vertical swipe for "expose" style app overview, etc. I'm running a Framework 13 and other than the physical click requiring more effort than the haptic "click" on a Mac, it's pretty dang similar.
- ryandrake 8mo agoI switched to a mac trackpad years ago due to hand pain that comes whenever I grip/use a mouse. Something about that half-closed-hand light grip has become just super painful. Unfortunately I still need to use one for FPS gaming, just haven't found a controller to match the speed and precision needed to aim and fire at a game opponent.
- dkenyser 8mo agoI'm in the same boat when it comes to gaming. Primarily use a trackball mouse and have used it for some games like World of Warcraft or Path of Exile but a traditional mouse is still king for any FPS game. I did learn recently that Zowie released an ergonomic version of their mouse that I plan on checking out though. Unfortunately there's just not a ton of options out there for ergonomic gaming mice.
- HerbManic 8mo agoConsider trying a vertical mouse. They look odd and the first day or two it is strange but after a while it becomes second nature. It was only after using one for a few mo ths that I realised most of my issues with typical mouses. Also it is funny going back to a standard mice, it feels like you are awkwardly using a tiktak for input.
- ryandrake 8mo agoYep that's what I currently use--it's the only way I can even bear holding one.
- thenthenthen 8mo agoSome people use console controllers on pc playing competitive FPS games (see for example TheBrokenMachine), maybe thats an alternative for you? Personally I think it would take me 5+ years to get used to tho…
- opan 8mo ago>haven't found a controller to match the speed and precision needed to aim and fire at a game opponent. Gyro aim is a must, and if you wanna be the best you can be, I would also suggest learning Flick Stick, which in addition to using gyro, remaps the right stick to immediately turn to the direction you tilt it in, allowing instant 180s (at the cost of no longer aiming vertically at all). Steam Input allows you to set this up for any game. You need to initially dial it in by adjusting how many pixels a 360 degree turn moves until you can do two 360s and be aiming in the same spot. You can do this by temporarily binding a button to do a 360 degree rotation and then finding something in the game to stare at. You can find videos of people doing this on Steam Deck. As for the controller, I'd currently recommend the 8BitDo Pro 2 or Pro 3, but if you can wait, the new Steam Controller should be even better.
- apparent 8mo ago> macOS setup guide used to include an option to turn on three finger drag, but now it has been hidden in the accessibility option. I don't understand why Apple does this. It's like the "allow ANC with one AirPod" setting, which is also inexplicably an accessibility option.
- drivers99 8mo agoThanks for mentioning that. I have one hearing aid so I've had to take it out so I can wear both AirPods when I want noise cancellation at all with AirPods. (I can also stream to the hearing aid but it is very tinny, completely lacking bass.)
- nashashmi 8mo agoWindows has something better than three finger drag. It has single finger second tap and hold. Plus extended zones for when the trackpad is not big enough to stretch across
- vladvasiliu 8mo agoBut it misses the killer feature that both macs and Linux have and makes this glorious: allow lifting the finger for a short time without letting go of the selection.
- ternera 8mo agoThe Magic Trackpad and Logitech MX Master 3s mouse are an excellent combination for me. I see benefits from both.
- rootusrootus 8mo agoI've tried them all. Trackpad, trackpoint, trackball, all of them. I keep coming back to a mouse. Everything else is either frustrating and finicky, or it induces RSI after a few hours.
- tokai 8mo agoDid you try a mousetrapper?
- thibaut_barrere 8mo agoWhat worked for me is “logitech lift”, one left handed the other right handed. When they are connected I set up my Mac to disable the trackpad. That + sport and standing desk, did wonder to me.
- drivers99 8mo agoI detest the trackpad on my Windows (Linux soon) laptop, so I have to use an external mouse with it, but I use the "magic trackpad" on my personal and work macbooks including external ones without issues (except if I have to drag something very far; this three finger drag seems to make it nicer although it wouldn't work if I needed to make sure not to let go like when dragging files around). Just wanted to point out that there's a big difference.
- vladvasiliu 8mo agoI don't daily drive a mac anymore, but I seem to remember that it allowed you to hold the selection with one or more fingers, and move another finger on touchpad for the actual moving part. You could lift this last finger without letting go of the selection.
- rootusrootus 8mo agoI wanted it to work, I really did. I even went so far as to buy an external magic trackpad, because people raved about it. That trackpad is in mint condition ... in my closet.
- tokai 8mo ago>I am still amazed by Mac's Trackpad quality to this day. I used to own Windows laptops, and most of their touchpads are so shit I have hear multiple times that patents are the reason for the bad trackpads outside of Apples products. But I have never been able to find a confirmation. Talking about mouse alternatives I would like to give rollermouse a shout-out. Beside the relaxed arm position they give, I really like that they invite to use both hands at the same time. With the similar workload between both hands and arms I find the over all strain lower even with repetitive tasks for a long time.
- hmokiguess 8mo agoI'm on 12 years and I didn't know about the 3 fingers drag, thanks for sharing!
- baggy_trough 8mo agoIt is utterly insane that 3 finger drag isn't the default or at least not buried 3 layers deep inside accessibility. Apple, what are you doing?
- latexr 8mo agoI didn’t use to be as buried before System Preferences became System Settings.
- bee_rider 8mo agoI thought it was going to be about someone who’d fully embraced the terminal. Preferring a trackpad to a mouse seems not so unusual, right? I guess sticking to it so completely is. I prefer marble-mouse type devices, but I can’t say with any certainty that I haven’t accidentally touched a mouse in the past 14 years.
- theandrewbailey 8mo ago> I prefer marble-mouse type devices I've never heard of those. Do you mean a trackball?
- bee_rider 8mo agoI guess Marble Mouse is the Logitech brand-name, oops.
- kstrauser 8mo agoWish I could use a trackpad as-is. My wrists are mildly FUBAR after decades of computer work/obsession, and now I'm having to deal with it. For me, that means that continual wrist pronation freaking hurts. Let your arms hang straight down. Now bend your elbows and lift your forearms so that they're at 90º to your body, i.e. parallel to the ground. Notice that your hands are naturally oriented so that if you were holding a pole, it would be much closer to pointing downward than sideways. Rotating your wrists "inward" so that your hand is parallel to your desk, in the position to use a trackpad, is not their normal position. I used a magic trackpad for quite a while until I found myself in agony by the end of the day. One of my coworkers told me he was exploring using vertical mice and that caught my attention. I tried one and it stopped the pain, like, immediately. Mousing around was awkward for a few days until I got used to the different hand orientation and movement, but that passed quickly. Now I'd never, ever go back to a trackpad. I'd considered making a little block to mount my magic trackpad sideways at, say, a 45º angle to my desk so that my wrist wasn't so pronated, but even then it nudges you toward radial and ulnar deviation which can also become uncomfortable over time. I'd rather just painlessly use my vertical mouse which uses forearm movement and write extension/flexion to zip the cursor around my screen.
- amarant 8mo agoSounds like you might benefit from something like the UHK[1]. It's got tenting, which approaches that natural tilt to your hands, and there are several mouse add-ons to choose from, I'm sure one of them will suit your needs. [1]https://uhk.io/ https://uhk.io/
- kstrauser 8mo agoYeah, something like that is awfully appealing. I don't have as much trouble with typing as with trackpadding for whatever happy combination of reasons, the biggest being that I taught myself to type after playing piano for many years first, and so completely ignored "proper" home-row typing in favor of piano-like "move your hand around and wiggle your fingers" typing. I'm still one of the faster typists I know, so doing it "wrong" hasn't held me back at all. But. If my hands start to hurt while typing, I'm definitely trying something like that as my first keyboard experiment.
- TheAmazingRace 8mo agoI get the love for Macbook trackpads, but Lenovo really nailed it with the ThinkPad trackpoint and glass trackpad combo, especially on more recent models.
- egypturnash 8mo agoI haven't used a mouse since about 1999 when my index finger told me I'd been doing entirely too much double-clicking in my Flash animation job. It's been all drawing tablets since then. I have a mouse that I use on the rare occasion of playing a game that requires you to move the view by pushing the cursor against the screen edges; I have to hold it in a weird, awkward grip because that tendon still starts screaming if I try to use it to click a mouse button.
- giancarlostoro 8mo agoTrackball gang here. Nulea seems to be my latest iteration, I've tried a bunch of them. When I first learned of them I thought they were ridiculous, but it really saved my hands going ergonomic w/ the Trackball and Keyboard (Microsoft Ergo style - Nulea as well).
- anarticle 8mo agoI have tried to go completely mouse/trackpad free with vimari/vimium, scoot, and rectangle. Worked relatively well, and helps me move things around as fast as I can think. web moves: https://github.com/televator-apps/vimari https://github.com/televator-apps/vimari mouse moves: https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot window moves: https://rectangleapp.com https://rectangleapp.com Drag lock is a good setting, just test drove it and will be using it.
- bobchadwick 8mo agoOoh thanks for the hot tip on Scoot! I've been using Mouseless (https://mouseless.click/ https://mouseless.click/) for a while and it's been a game changer, allowing me to almost never touch the trackpad. That said, I like the fact that Scoot allows for selecting elements. Gonna give it a shot!
- seanwilson 8mo agoI like laptop trackpads because it means you're always close to the keyboard, so you can easily switch between cursor and typing without only relying on one. It's good for UI design work for example.
- Ancapistani 8mo agoIf, like me, you like to script your Mac environment setup, the following two commands SHOULD do the same thing: defaults write com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad TrackpadThreeFingerDrag -bool true defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad TrackpadThreeFingerDrag -bool true Unfortunately I've not been able to verify this, as it doesn't take effect until you log out and back in, and I'm in the middle of a task. Once it's done I'll test it and either update this post or comment with my results, depending on how long it takes me. ETA: I tested it, and the behavior is correct when I log back in after running the above. Oddly though, the settings aren't showing as turned on in the settings panel. If anyone has a scriptable solution to that I'd love to hear it.
- themadturk 8mo agoWhen I do use a mouse, I use a Logitech Lift because horizontal grip mice are uncomfortable, but now that I've retired and 99% of my time is on my MacBook Air, it's all trackpad, and my hands don't seem to mind it.
- drdec 8mo agocan anyone recommend similar hardware compatible with linux? that also supports the three fingered drag and other stuff mentioned in the article?
- LtWorf 8mo agoYou must use wayland on linux for these things to work.
- agys 8mo agoThe three finger drag is an ergonomic marvel, combined with tapping (vs. clicking) and a couple of four finger gestures it’s perfect. I don’t use (or drag around) a mouse since very long; not even when heavily using Photoshop and similar pointer-heavy applications.
- bartread 8mo agoIt’s funny: I’d never given it a moment’s thought until I saw this piece but I’ve realised I’m probably the same. The only time I’ve used a mouse since maybe 2012 or so is on the odd occasion I’ve fired up an FPS on a laptop rather than on a games console. And that’s it. (I’ve tried playing FPSs with trackpads as well but, even with Mac trackpads, which remain far and away the best, it is not a good - or even acceptable - experience. Mouse all the way for fragging action.)
- bombcar 8mo agoTrackpad works fine for everything - but mouse + keyboard still wins by far for FPS. "Right click and drag" is just not something a trackpad does well.
- snowwrestler 8mo agoThe three finger drag pattern comes from Fingerworks, the multitouch trackpad company that Apple bought to get their multitouch tech. A Fingerworks trackpad is when I switched away from a mouse, and in some ways it was even better than a modern Apple trackpad. First it was huge, maybe like twice the area of a MacBook Pro trackpad. It had no click switch at all. Taps only, which were very reliable. It also lay flat on the desk and was only a few mm thick. So it felt like just resting your hand on the desk. And it was possible to just passively rest your hand on it with no reaction. So using it, my hand and wrist were totally relaxed when not moving the cursor (most of the time). Whereas with modern Apple trackpads, I sometimes get spurious inputs when resting my hand on it. It also had tons of gestures that were mapped to keyboard shortcuts. So an “opening the jar” arcing motion with 4 fingers opened whatever file was currently highlighted. And “closing the jar” closed the current window. Etc.
- UltraSane 8mo agoI remember seeing the original Fingerworks website and then it vanished and I assumed they went out of business. But little did I know.
- juliendorra 8mo agoThey are the basis of the prototype that Bas Ording used to design all the interactions we know today on touch: inertial scrolling with rubber band effect, row of icons for apps, pinch to zoom, etc. It was a fingerwork trackpad with his Director (in 2004!) interactions projected on! It was designed for a Mac tablet, but then the focus shifted to a phone.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- simojo 8mo agoOne of my buddies has beaten minecraft many times using only his mac trackpad. In fact, he's better than I am with a mouse.
- satisfice 8mo ago“Mouse!” —- Rafael Alonzo’s I.T.F. Technical Computer Institute Ad (by way of SNL)
- Rendello 8mo agoI've always hated trackpads, they always made my fingers extremely sore and I didn't find they worked well. Someone told me "you're just not used to it", like I hadn't been already trying for 20 years! The Mac trackpad, however, is wonderful. I enjoy using it.
- cacao-cacao 8mo ago[flagged]
- kevinsync 8mo agoI might be the odd-man-out here, but I almost exclusively sit at a desk with a full-size mechanical keyboard and mouse, 2 monitors, and a tower in the closet nearby LOL -- I can't get any real work done hunched over a laptop! Not that I'm incapable of adapting, I just dislike the cramped ergonomics of screen and keyboard, and really need a mouse for precision in Photoshop etc. It always blew my mind when I worked in an office how coworkers were cool with coding on a 13 or 14 inch screen, rarely docked the laptop, sitting around on couches or whatever instead.
- BuildsTim91 8mo ago[dead]
- broken-kebab 8mo agoTouchpad is unergonomic. It can be better than some other touchpad but using it constantly is like having a bad posture while sitting. A bit less damaging tbh cause spine is a spine, you know, and likely you have two arms anyway. But in the same category of unergonomic things.
- Markoff 8mo agoTIL majority of people (ITT) call touchpad a trackpad I thought you use it to distinguish between external trackpad vs laptop touchpad, but seems many people still use it even for laptop touchpad, so can someone enlighten me what's the distinction in usage?
- delitrem 8mo agoI've been using an external trackpad instead of a mouse since around 2009. At first, I used ratpoison as my window manager on my EEE PC as a daily driver, which is controlled entirely via the keyboard, then I used StumpWM for a long time and now I use cagebreak (which is a Wayland compositor with ratpoison-like behaviour). I use the trackpad very sparingly, only when it’s really necessary.
- MrSkelter 8mo agoI’ve been on a Wacom tablet (without display) for almost three decades now. I was given one free, when Wacom was my client in my first job, and after a couple of days of awkwardness have never looked back. In that time I have owned 4. Just upgraded to a 2025 model (the latest) recently. I have large hands and using a mouse means my hand is resting more in the desk than the mouse. I find it uncomfortable and inaccurate. I love being able to do graphical things with a pen and though I love the trackpad, prolonged use causes discomfort due to needing to keep my fingers under tension. The more precision you need on a trackpad the worse it gets. I think the learning curve on tablets is hard to overcome. They feel weird for the first few hours. It’s worth trying to overcome. Also around cheap tablets. Wacom survive for a reason.
- mcyukon 8mo agoI too have ended up with a pen tablet. XP-Pen mini 7" Broke my wrist snowboarding which ended up with my wrist getting pinned back together. After it surgically "fixed" and healed and I started using that hand again, I got super inflamed tendons in my wrist to the point it would wake me up a night and barely able to use a normal mouse at work. I ended up trying 3 different types of ergo mice, none of which helped. In desperation I ended up ordering the pen tablet, it felt good in my hand right away and after struggling with brain/hand/cursor location for 2 weeks it's become my preferred method. I mapped the shortcut keys on the tablet to copy/paste/middle click/ double click which is awesome. For me the tablet lives right in-front of the keyboard, just like a laptop trackpad. I tried off to the side, but couldn't get used to it.
- adrian_b 8mo agoIn my opinion, fingers are too big. I need to do precise drawing work, like drawing electronic schematics or PCB layouts or other kinds of technical drawings. I cannot imagine doing such things comfortable with a touchpad. I have also not used a mouse for more than a decade, but that is because I had switched at some point from a mouse to a trackball and a few years ago I have switched to something much better, i.e. a small graphic tablet (having the size of a mouse pad) used in mouse mode, a.k.a. "Relative" mode, instead of in its default "Absolute" mode. With a sharp stylus, I can point much more precisely than I could ever do with my fingers. I can also move the cursor instantaneously to any part of the screen, with a minimal movement of my fingers, because the velocity of the point of the stylus is much greater than I could ever achieve for the tip of my finger. Moreover, the position in which I hold the stylus is more comfortable than if I would have to put the finger on a touchpad and the movements of the fingers have a smaller amplitude than required by a touchpad, which also improves comfort. (To reach any point on the screen, only the 3 fingers holding the stylus have to move, no hand movement is necessary.) So from my experience, a touchpad cannot compete with a stylus, neither for accuracy, nor for speed, nor for comfort. (With a very light stylus, like from Wacom, also the transitions between touch typing on the keyboard and using the graphic pointing device are much faster than with a mouse, because touch typing remains possible with the stylus between the fingers.) A touchpad may be fine for text manipulation or Internet browsing, but for drawing, it is too slow in comparison with a mouse or trackball, and even more so in comparison with a stylus, while the devices that are better for drawing can also easily accomplish the simpler tasks for which a touchpad is acceptable.