How to right click on a Chromebook

The Chromebook touchpad or trackpad works in much the same way as a Macbook trackpad. It doesn’t have the separate individual buttons at the bottom that some Windows laptops do, but is an all-in-one design that relies on specific gestures.

Although some Windows laptops also have this design, right clicking on them generally involves pressing in the bottom right corner of the trackpad with a single finger. This is not the case on a Chromebook.

• To perform a right click on a Chromebook, you must tap the touchpad with two fingers at the same time. This can be anywhere on the touchpad.
• Alternatively, you can hold the Alt key on your keyboard and then single tap on the touchpad.

Sometimes the above functionality needs to be enabled in the settings of the Chromebook before it will work. Follow the below steps to do this:

You may have noticed in your attempts to right click that depressing your two fingers for too long or moving them after tapping the touchpad will move your page up and down.

This is due to you accidentally performing the scroll gesture.

Scrolling on a Chromebook (assuming it is enabled in the touchpad settings – see above) is performed through holding your two fingers on the trackpad at the same time and moving them up or down. Releasing them stops the scroll.

Middle clicking is a useful feature. If you have a mouse you can press the mouse wheel / middle button to middle click. If you do this on a link it will open it up in a new background tab in your web browser, leaving you on the page you’re currently viewing. Middle clicking on an open tab will close it down.

To perform this action on a Chromebook, simply tap the touchpad with three fingers at the same time, instead of the two you’d use to right click or the single to left click.