Feel a tick when a gesture works: haptics for Mac gestures

Trackpad gestures on a Mac are silent: you tap or swipe, then watch the screen to find out whether anything happened. Trill gives them a feel. On a Force Touch trackpad it taps back under your finger the moment it recognises a gesture, before the action runs, with a separate feel for a gesture landing, a window moving to a new zone, each step of a slide, the end of a slide, a gesture that has nothing to do in the app in front, and, if you switch it on, a Trill shortcut running. One Strength setting covers them all: Off, Light, Medium or Strong.

On a trackpad without Force Touch there is nothing to tap with. Trill still names each action on screen as it runs, and it can play a quiet sound in place of the tap.

Why a gesture needs an answer

A button clicks and a key travels. A four-finger tap on glass gives you nothing until the result shows up, and the result is not always quick or easy to see. A track pauses in a music app hidden behind three windows; a window you swiped to the left half was already there. Each time, you are left wondering whether the trackpad saw you, and the natural response is to do the gesture again. That is how one “close the tab” becomes two.

Gestures you set up yourself make this worse than the ones built into macOS, for a plain reason: they are new, and your hand is still learning them. A tap that missed because you used four fingers instead of five looks exactly like a tap that worked in an app where nothing visible changed.

A tap back settles the question without looking. Feel the tick and the gesture was recognised. Feel nothing and it was not, so try again, or check the finger count.

The six feels, and what each one means

Trill uses six named feels, each tied to one kind of event. There are few enough to learn by using them, without studying.

Tick. A gesture was recognised, or a window you dragged has landed. This is the one you feel most often, and the one the others are measured against.

Bump. When you drag a window towards an edge, a translucent preview in your Mac’s accent colour shows where it will land. Each time that preview moves to a new zone (from the left half to the top-left quarter, say), you feel a bump. You can feel your way across the zones, let go when the one you want is showing, and the tick confirms the window has landed.

Step. Trill’s Media set turns a slide along the right edge of the trackpad into volume, and a slide along the top edge into brightness. A slide moves in steps, and each step taps once, a little like the clicks on a volume knob with notches.

Limit. When a slide reaches 0% or 100%, you feel Limit instead of Step, so you know that pushing further will do nothing. It saves you sliding the whole length of the edge to make sure the volume really is at its lowest.

Nothing here. Each gesture in Trill works everywhere, or only in the apps you choose. If you make a gesture that has nothing set for it in the app in front, Trill tells you so with a feel of its own, instead of leaving you to wonder whether you missed. Once you know this one, you stop repeating a Safari gesture in Mail. You feel it too when you make a gesture that Trill is holding back because macOS uses the same one (more on that in When a trackpad gesture clashes with macOS).

Shortcut tick. One clear pulse when a Trill keyboard shortcut runs, felt only if a finger is on the trackpad at the time. It starts switched off; turn it on in Haptics if you want it.

Why the tap comes before the action

Trill taps back the moment it knows what you did, before the action runs. The order matters more than it sounds.

Some actions take a moment: opening an app, running an Apple Shortcut or a shell command, moving a window to another display. If the feedback waited for the action to finish, a slow action would feel like a missed gesture, and you would do it again. Because the tick arrives when the gesture is recognised, it tells you about your hand, not about the app.

That split also makes a problem quicker to track down.

1. No tick at all. Trill did not recognise the gesture, or none of your gestures uses it. Count your fingers, check that you tapped rather than pressed, and check that Trill is not paused.
2. Nothing here. The gesture was recognised, but in this app it has no job, or macOS uses the same gesture and Trill is holding yours back. Use it in the app it was made for, set it to work everywhere, or look for “Blocked by macOS” beside it in Trill.
3. A tick, then no result. Your hand did its part. Look at what the gesture is set to do, and at permissions. Trill needs Accessibility to press keys and clicks and to move windows. While that is off, its menu says “Trill can’t press keys or move windows yet” and offers Allow Accessibility.

Setting the strength

Strength is on the Haptics screen in Trill’s window: click Trill’s icon in the menu bar, choose Open Trill, then Haptics. There is one Strength for everything you feel, with four choices: Off, Light, Medium and Strong. It applies to every feel at once, so the feels always keep the same relationship to each other. The same screen has a switch for each feel, if there is one you would rather not have, and a Feel it button that plays the feel under a resting finger.

A sensible way to choose:

1. Start at Medium and use it for a day of normal work.
2. If the ticks begin to feel like noise, or you notice them more than the gestures, go to Light.
3. If you find yourself unsure whether a slide moved a step, or you work with your fingers resting very lightly, go to Strong.
4. If you want the gestures without any feel, choose Off. The gestures keep working; only the tapping stops.

Do not confuse this with the Click setting in System Settings, under Trackpad, then Point & Click. That slider (Light, Medium, Firm) sets how hard you have to press to click. Trill’s Strength sets how firmly the trackpad taps back. They are separate settings, and changing one leaves the other as it was.

Which trackpads can tap back

Haptics need a Force Touch trackpad. A Force Touch trackpad does not pivot on a hinge the way older trackpads did; the click you feel is made by the trackpad itself, and the same hardware is what lets an app like Trill tap your finger.

Built-in trackpads. Every MacBook that can run macOS 14 Sonoma has a Force Touch trackpad, so on those Trill can tap back. The one exception is a newer model, the MacBook Neo (2026), which has a mechanical trackpad: Trill runs on it, but cannot tap back there. If you are not sure about your Mac, the Haptics screen lists each trackpad under Devices and says whether you can feel Trill on it.

Magic Trackpad. The second-generation Magic Trackpad and later models have Force Touch. The original Magic Trackpad, the one that takes AA batteries, has a mechanical click and cannot tap back. On it, you still get an answer from the label Trill shows on screen as each action runs, or from the quiet sound if you turn on Play a quiet sound on devices you can’t feel.

Keyboard shortcuts. Keyboards cannot vibrate, so a shortcut, including one on the Hyper Key, is felt only through Shortcut tick, with a finger resting on the trackpad as it runs. Shortcut tick starts switched off. Turn it on, rest a finger on the trackpad, press ✦ with an arrow to snap a window to a half, and you feel one pulse as the shortcut runs.

Haptics in BetterTouchTool

If you are comparing gesture apps, BetterTouchTool also does haptics, in a different way. BetterTouchTool customises trackpad gestures, the mouse, keyboard shortcuts and many other inputs, and among its actions is Haptic Feedback, which, in its own words, “Triggers haptic feedback on trackpad. Supports built-in patterns and custom haptic presets.” Haptic feedback there is an action like any other, so you decide where it goes and which pattern it plays.

Trill takes the opposite approach. The feel is part of recognising a gesture, so there is nothing to add to each gesture, and the meaning of each feel is fixed: a tick always means recognised, a bump always means a new zone. If you want to design your own patterns and place them yourself, BetterTouchTool gives you that control. If you would rather every gesture answer you without any setup, that is what Trill does.

Questions

Can I turn the haptics off and keep the gestures?

Yes. Set Strength to Off. Every gesture, shortcut and window snap keeps working; only the tapping stops. You can turn it back on at any strength whenever you like.

Why do I feel a tap but nothing happens?

If the tap felt different from the usual tick, it was probably Nothing here: the gesture is set for other apps, not this one, or macOS uses the same gesture and Trill is holding yours back. If it was a tick, the gesture was recognised and the action is the part to check, starting with whether Trill has Accessibility permission.

Will a Magic Trackpad tap back?

A second-generation Magic Trackpad or later will, because it has Force Touch. The original model, with AA batteries, will not; Trill’s on-screen label, or the optional quiet sound, tells you what ran instead.

Is Trill’s Strength the same as the trackpad Click setting in System Settings?

No. Click (Light, Medium, Firm) sets how hard you press to click. Strength (Off, Light, Medium, Strong) sets how firmly Trill taps back. Each leaves the other alone.