To enable the virtual touchpad, either long-press or right-click the taskbar and select “Show touchpad button”. This option isn’t available on devices without a touch screen.
You’ll see a new touchpad icon on your taskbar, near the touch keyboard button. Tap or click it to open or close the virtual touchpad.
To use the virtual touchpad, just place your finger on the touchpad on your touch screen and move it around like you would on a normal touchpad. The mouse cursor will move around the screen as…
Your iPhone is packed with hidden touch gestures and shortcuts you could use, if only you knew about them. You might have discovered some of these already, but Apple is always adding more new gestures. Here are 10 of our favorites.
Tap the Menu Bar to Scroll to the Top
In practically any app, you can tap the menu bar at the top of your screen—that’s the bar with the time on it—to scroll to the top of the current document or list. For example, if you’ve scrolled down a web page in Safari and want to quickly scroll back to the top, just tap the menu bar at the top of your screen. It’ll immediately jump back to the top of the page.
Reopen Closed Tabs by Long-Pressing Safari’s New Tab Button
The Safari browser included on your iPhone allows you to reopen tabs you’ve previously closed. To find this feature, tap the button at the bottom right of the Safari app to view your open tabs. Long-press the new tab button and you’ll see a list of closed tabs you can reopen.
Move the Text Cursor With 3D Touch
If you have an iPhone with the pressure-sensitive 3D Touch feature, you can easily move the text entry cursor while typing something. With the keyboard open, hard-press the spacebar. The keys on the keyboard will turn blank, and the cursor will appear. Move your finger to the left or right and the cursor will move. Lift your finger to set the cursor’s position.
This works with the iPhone’s default keyboard as well as some third-party keyboards—it depends on whether keyboard’s developer has added support for this feature. For example, this trick also works in Google’s Gboard keyboard.
Double Tap the Home Button for “Reachability”
On larger iPhones—including the iPhone and iPhone Plus, but not the iPhone SE or older, smaller iPhones—you can tap (but not press) the Home button twice to enter “Reachability” mode. All the content on the iPhone’s screen will be lowered on the display, making it much easier to press buttons on the top of the screen when using your iPhone with one hand. Double tap the Home button again to leave Reachability mode.
This is different from double-pressing the iPhone’s Home button, which brings up the app switcher.
Change Your Scrubbing Speed for Music and Podcasts
When playing music or a podcast, you may want to “scrub” through the track at different speeds. To do this, touch your finger to the progress bar and move the finger up or…
Touch ID on the new MacBook Pro makes logging in so much easier: just place your finger on the power button, and you’re in. It’s a small thing, but it makes waking up your computer and logging in nearly instant.
By default, this works with whatever finger you choose when you first set up your Mac, but sometimes you might want to use a different finger. Maybe you’re carrying your MacBook with your right hand, and want to log in with your left index finger, or even your right thumb. Or maybe you just want your family to be able to log in using their fingers.
Watching Tony Stark wave his hands to manipulate projected constructs is an ever-approaching reality — at least in terms of gesture-tracking. Lift — a prototype built by a team from UC Irvine and FX Palo Alto Laboratory — is able to track up to ten fingers with 1.7 mm accuracy!
Lift’s gesture-tracking is achieved by using a DLP projector, two Arduino MKR1000s, and a light sensor for each digit. Lift’s design allows it to work on virtually any flat surface; the projected image acts as a grid and work…
You can put down the pen and forget your PIN with Mastercard’s newest credit card. As The Verge reports, the company is testing out a credit card with a built-in fingerprint scanner that allows customers to authorize their payments with the swipe of a digit—no PIN or signature necessary.
The new Mastercard is just as slim as a regular one, and it works with all existing chip-and-PIN readers. To get one of the fancy new cards, you’ll need to register at a branch. Your fingerprint will then be converted into an encrypted digital template, which is stored on the card. To use the card, you’ll just dip it into a store’s card reader as normal. But instead of entering a PIN, you’ll be prompted to place a finger or thumb on the embedded sensor on the card’s top right corner in order to…
