With default gesture settings, gestures in web browsers will follow UPDD Gestures settings and behave as follows: Single taps will click, and double taps will double click. Drags will perform a click and drag. A press will perform a right click. While these settings may be desirable in some cases, it produces different behavior than what people have come to expect when interacting with web pages using touch, such as on iPhone or iPad.
Therefore, when interacting with a browser in MacOS in some instances you may wish the interaction to be more akin to the iOS experience.
If this is the case you can define the target browser app in the 'Browser Application' list in the Other Settings dialog and when the browser becomes focused / topmost on the desktop Gestures will automatically adjust its setting to offer a similar interaction to that experienced in iOS. By default we list the most common browsers that can run under MacOS.
Note: The Apple Maps application reacts better to touch using the same settings specified below hence the Maps app is also defined in the Browser list.
Having specified an application as a web browser, Gestures will automatically use the following gesture actions in order to best emulate touch screen browsing in iOS:
- Set Tap to: Click, using left mouse button, and check "Click nearest clickable UI element"
- Check "Enable Double Tap"
- Set Double Tap to: Smart zoom
- Set Drag to: Scroll, with "Scroll direction natural" checked and "Scroll item under the gesture" checked.
- Set Press to: Click and drag, using left mouse button
- Uncheck "Pinch and Spread cause different actions"
- Set Pinch and Spread to: Zoom in and out, with "Zoom item under gesture" checked.
These setting seem to give the best results. All the rest of the settings are left at their defaults but of course can be tweaked if required. However, the settings above are the most important ones for delivering an iOS like experience when using a browser.