From the course: Computer Literacy for Mac (2018)

The right click - Mac OS Tutorial

From the course: Computer Literacy for Mac (2018)

The right click

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- [Instructor] An essential part in learning to become proficient when it comes to using a computer is to learn the right click. The term right click refers to the button found on the right side of a mouse with two or more buttons. Generally, if you are right-handed, you click the left button of the mouse with your right index finger. This is the mouse's main button that allows you to select items, double click things or even fire lasers at enemies in video games. But both the Mac operating system and most of the application you'll use have special shortcuts and menus that will appear when you click the items with the right mouse button. For example, in a previous movie, we saw that you can empty the trash by choosing Finder, Empty Trash. But another way to do that is to simply right click on the trash icon, here in the dock, which opens this menu, and you can choose Empty Trash from here. Or right clicking on my desktop reveals shortcuts for creating a new folder or changing my desktop's background image. The point is that you should learn to try right clicking things just to see what goodies software designers may have hidden. Oftentimes, you'll find shortcuts to commands and actions that may otherwise involve navigating through several menu or dialogue boxes. Now, if you're left-handed or if right clicking isn't working properly for you, you can check your settings by going to the Apple menu up here, opening up System Preferences, and clicking Mouse. Here under primary mouse button, make sure Left is selected if you're right-handed, or choose Right if you're left-handed. Now, if you only have a single button mouse, although those are getting much rarer, you can also activate right click actions by holding down the ctrl key on your keyboard while clicking. Doing so is the equivalent of right clicking, and you'll see the same menus and options appear as if you right clicked. So, that's all I really wanted to mention in this movie, but it really is a very important concept to learn. Just take some time when working in various applications to right click on a few things and see what options might be available. More often than not, you'll find and learn some great time-saving shortcuts.

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