Skip to main content

How To Easily Activate Two Finger Scroll In Windows Laptops

00 Two Finger Scroll.jpg“Wow! How did you do that?”, my friend asked me with amazement, when he looked at how I scroll up and down the webpage using my two fingers. “Can my laptop do that?” he asked. He was a bit disappointed when I explained that as far as I know, the feature is Mac-specific because Apple owns the patent to that multi-touch technology.
But my friend’s question made me think. Is it really Mac specific? So I did some searching and found an unexpected answer. It turns out that some of the latest non-Mac laptops have similar features built in, and as for the older ones – as long as they use a Synaptic touchpad, you can easily add two finger scrolling using a little help from a little application called, well, Two-Finger-Scroll.

Using the Two Finger Scroll

The latest version of this tiny little app – version 1.0.6 – can be downloaded in the blink of an eye because its size is only around 290KB.
two finger scroll
The Two Finger Scroll app could work out of the box without the need to install it. But before running it, you would want to move it to the “Program Files” folder and keep it safe there. If you run it and move the app later, you have to redo the settings one more time.
two finger scroll windows
After you open the app, it will quietly reside in the taskbar on the bottom right of the screen and you can use it as is. However, there are several adjustments that you can do to have a better two finger scrolling experience.
Right-click the hand icon on the taskbar and choose “Settings” from the pop-up menu. This menu is also the place that you have to go to deactivate two finger scrolling without closing the app.
00_twofingerscrolling_settings.png
The first is the General setting. Check the “Start with Windows” box to make sure that the feature is always available after every system restart. I personally think that this option is important because to me using Windows comfortably is equal with a constant system restart at least once a day.
01_twofingerscroll_general_settings.png
The next setting is the Scrolling. Even though there are several options that you can choose, I didn’t notice any significant differences between different combinations. Checking and unchecking the “Acceleration” box did not change anything either. The one that really determines user experience is the speed. After several trials, I settled with the minimum speed (the speed mark is far to the left).
To know more about the differences between “Scroll mode” options, click the “Help” link under the options. The developer also promises a circular scroll type for future versions.
02_twofingerscroll_scrolling_settings.png
The last setting is the Tapping. You can activate two finger and three finger tapping. All you have to do is choose which mouse button click to imitate when you do those tapping. The available choices are: left button, middle button, right button, button 4 and button 5.
I couldn’t find out what “One + one finger” and “Two + one finger” means, and experimenting on different taps didn’t give me any results either. So I disabled those two and went with “Two fingers” and “Three fingers” instead. I also left the “Minimal finger movement distance” setting alone.
two finger scrolling

Two Scroll Or Not Two Scroll

Compared to the common trackpad-side scrolling used by most non-Mac laptops, I feel that the two finger scroll is more comfortable. But maybe that’s just me.
After looking at the possibilities, I hope that the developer will make other trackpad gestures – like pinching, swiping and rotating – available in this useful application.
What do you think? Have you tried two finger scrolling? Which scrolling type do you prefer? Do you know other alternatives? Share your thoughts and opinions using the comments below.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document?  That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...
1 comment
Read more

Build Your Own Awesome Personal 3D Avatar with Avatara

Do you use social networks and want to build your own awesome 3D avatar? Maybe you want to send someone a cute cuddly image of yourself (kind of)? Or maybe you have your own ideas of what you would do with an Avatar… Well look no further than Avatara which I discovered from the MakeUseOf directory . You can create 3d avatars out of pre-set up templates or create your own from scratch. To start, visit Avatara’s homepage . You will see this screen: Click Get Started to umm, get started! That will take you to this screen: You see that you can build your own Avatar using an uploaded head shot like the Obama one above (just an example, guys). Or roll with one of their awesome avatars. I chose to start with a blank avatar by clicking Start with a blank avatar at the bottom of the screen. That takes you to here: I clicked on the filter at the top and told it to filter out everything but male characters and then I saw this: I rolled with Buck and continued. You need to click Select...
1 comment
Read more

Ex-Skypers Launch Virtual Whiteboard Deekit

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a...
Post a Comment
Read more