From the course: Help Yourself: Tech Tips Weekly

Using touch gestures

From the course: Help Yourself: Tech Tips Weekly

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Using touch gestures

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- [Instructor] One of the things I keep forgetting about my laptop touch screen is that it's a touch screen. I can use various gestures in Windows to manipulate items on the screen, and some of these tricks work on the touchpad as well. For example, I can use my finger to drag around this image, this map, on the touch screen. Windows also lets you zoom in and zoom out just as you would on a smartphone. So you pinch your fingers to zoom out or you spread your fingers to zoom in. To show the desktop, use three fingers and swipe down from the top of the screen and the window is minimized. Swipe up and the window is restored. That's three fingers swiping up. Here's the desktop. I'm going to long press, press and hold, and release. And you see a shortcut menu. There's the shortcut menu. The equivalent of right-clicking the mouse. This operation doesn't always work with many apps, but it does work on the desktop. To switch between apps, use three fingers to swipe left or right on the screen. Here you see a list of open apps. As I move my fingers left or right, keeping three fingers down, I can choose a specific app and it fills the screen. To view notifications, use one finger and swipe in from the right edge of the screen, and there are the notifications To view widgets, if you have them enabled, swipe with one finger in from the left edge of the screen and there are the widgets. If you have multiple desktops available, you can use four fingers to swipe left or right on the screen. I don't have that enable here. But using four fingers would be one way to make it happen. Many of these tricks do work on a touchpad. So if you don't have a touch screen, you can also try them on a touchpad. And as a bonus, they can be customized. Press the Windows + I keyboard shortcut to bring up the Settings app. Choose Bluetooth and Devices, Touchpad. These items here set the gestures, three fingers and four fingers. Here are the current assignments for three fingers and their directions. Multitasking view, show desktop, switch apps, and switch apps. Use this menu to choose another set depending on what your preferences are, or you can choose to do nothing, which disables this feature. And here's the same options for four fingers, which you can choose a preset option from this menu, or you can choose to do nothing. Some of these tricks are handy and some of them are good to know, but awkward to use. Three or four-finger swiping is a bit much for me, but the other tricks come in handy as I use my laptop, especially when I'm already using the touch screen or the trackpad to manipulate items on the desktop.

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