Can I Turn Off Gestures?

Question

Can I Turn Off Gestures?

Last week lightening hit my house and nuked my mid-2011 iMac. I bought a new 21.5 inch machine. This comes with El Capitan. I also got a magic mouse 2. I find it very difficult to do some basic things like page down in a window with scroll bars. Also some sites, particularly map sites like this one: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/ are unusable with mouse gestures enabled. In older OS Xs one could turn off gestures. I tried to disable gestures with System Preferences but with every option unchecked they are still enabled. Is this impossible with El Capitan?

The up and down buttons on my magic keyboard don't page up and down. Do I have to buy a keyboard with a numeric pad to get the page up and down buttons? If I buy an Apple one-button wired mouse can I use it without gestures? I use the track pad on lap tops but find mouse gestures on a desk top computer to be very difficult for many things like pointing and clicking, selecting text or paging down without scrolling as wel. Has Apple decided that I have to use gestures?

iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10), 10.10.1

Posted on May 21, 2016 6:04 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 10, 2017 12:28 PM in response to Cayce

Years ago I had a not-very-bad hand injury. Now my hand is somewhat crooked. This is no problem for anything except it makes it quite awkward to use gestures. The solution before was to use my older Magic Mouse 1 with all of the gestures turned off in the control panel. Now that I "upgraded" to Sierra, even with this older mouse and all gestures off, swipe left and right is always enabled. Looking at the Apple store, I see that even the Apple Mouse is gesture enabled. What I really need is a one-click mouse. Since this is unavailable from Apple, perhaps someone can suggest a third-party solution. Thanks...

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Answer 2

Feb 12, 2017 7:58 AM in response to Warrren Anderson

I use a lot of map applications. Using a mouse with gestures makes applications like Google Earth unusable. They mis-interpret mouse clicks. To some degree I can make them work by hitting command-control before clicking and then dragging the content or hitting a control but they are all still mostly much broken.

The same is true of web content like this: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map or my county's gis information system.

The only way I can figure out to enable me use these is to buy a USB one-click mouse (not available from apple). If this works I'll post the results here.

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Answer 3

Feb 18, 2017 3:54 PM in response to Warrren Anderson

Problem solved: Go to System Preferences. Click on Mouse & Trackpad. Click on the Mouse Options... button. Un-check the Scrolling check box. Yes, you can disable gestures. They just made it harder to do it.

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Answer 4

leroydouglas

Level 10

202,024 points

May 21, 2016 6:30 PM in response to Warrren Anderson

OS X El Capitan: Learn trackpad and mouse gestures

Use Multi-Touch gestures on your Mac - Apple Support

Magic trackpad maybe a better fit to disable gestures. Keyboard should work as expected.

https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard/

If your Apple wireless mouse, keyboard, or trackpad aren't working as expected - Apple Support

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Answer 5

May 21, 2016 7:06 PM in response to Warrren Anderson

No, Apple has not decided anything for you, but you bought a mouse that is based on gesture control so that is the way it is going to work.

Do you not still have your old mouse from your previous system? Can you not use that one if you are used to the way it works?

Also, you don't have to use a mouse made by Apple. Many third party mouses work fine with the Mac.

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Answer 6

Cayce

Level 1

11 points

Oct 9, 2016 3:28 PM in response to Warrren Anderson

"No, Apple has not decided anything for you, but you bought a mouse that is based on gesture control so that is the way it is going to work."

This is a ridiculous non-answer, nearly as dumb as the Apple Magic Mouse and all its issues.

If there's not supposed to be control of the gestures of the Magic Mouse, why are there controls in the mouse prefs to enable or disable them? We can't disable the mouse gestures because this is Apple Crapple in action. If you need more proof of that, just look at the charging port on the latest version of the Magic Mouse. It comes straight out of the underside of the body. Can't be used while it's charging. So to be on the safe side, you need a backup mouse.

This is all just Apple's determination to be better than MicroSoft at everything, including being really, really dumb.

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