by Jim Lynch

OS X El Capitan: Enable three-finger tap to preview Web pages in Safari

How-To
Oct 07, 2015
MacOS

How to use a three-fingered tap to preview Web pages in Safari

OS X El Capitan has brought a number of changes and new features to Mac users. But one of the changes might be somewhat confusing to new users of OS X El Capitan. Some folks have wondered if it’s still possible to preview links in Safari with a three-finger tap.

In this how-to I’ll show you how you how to quickly enable this helpful feature.

How to enable the three-finger tap to preview Safari links

osx el capitan trackpad settings look up data detectors

Go to System Preferences, click on Trackpad and then click the “Look up and data detectors” option to enable the three-finger tap to preview Web pages.

Here’s how you can enable the three-finger tap to preview Web links in Safari:

1. Click on System Preferences.

2. Click on Trackpad.

3. Tap on the Point & Click tab.

4. Tap the “Look up & data detectors” option.

Now you can tap a Web page link in Safari with three fingers to see a preview of the Web page before actually clicking through and loading it.

Three-finger tap to preview Web links in Safari is a big time-saver

osx el capitan three finger tap preview

Tapping with thee fingers lets you quickly preview the contents of a Web page without having to click through and load it.

Since I enabled the three-finger tap to preview Web links in Safari, I’ve found it to be a big time-saver. It’s much faster to use this feature to quickly preview a Web page instead of actually loading the page to see its content.

Let’s face it, we all see tons and tons of Web page links each day. But how many are actually worth clicking through to read? The three-finger tap to preview links in Safari feature has saved me a lot of time I might otherwise have wasted clicking through to Web pages that I’m not actually interested in reading.

So I recommend taking the time to enable the three-finger tap to preview Web links in Safari. Once you get used to using it every day, you’ll find that it quickly becomes an indispensable tool for web browsing without wasting a lot of time loading lame Web pages.

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