MacinSpot

When I got my MacBook I found it very annoying to have to hold down the control button then clicking the touchpad to get the “right click” contextual menu.  I found a way around this very quickly.  I did this on the Tiger OS(10.4) so I know you can do this on Tiger as well though I believe the way to change the setting is a little different. Regardless of the version, this trick is for the MacBook line.

Open up the System Preferences which can be found by default on your dock.  In Tiger it looks like a light switch but on Leopard they changed the icon and it looks like a few gears grinding together much like this:

If this icon isn’t on your dock then you can access the System Preferences by clicking the Apple menu in the very upper left of your screen then select System Preferences.  See the screen shot below.

Once you have the System Preferences open, click on “Trackpad” and your window changes to show the settings for your trackpad. You should down towards the middle a section that looks like this:

At the bottom of the screenshot above you will see a check box next to “For secondary clicks, place two fingers on the trackpad then click the button” which basically means what it says. If you check that box then close the window your right click menu will pop up when you put two fingers on the touchpad, then click the mouse button. If you click the box next to “Clicking” you will see that bottom line change to “Tap trackpad using two fingers for secondary click” which is what my personal MacBook is set at. See below.

Everyone is different so you may like holding the control key, then clicking to get a contectual menu. You may like placing two fingers on the touchpad, then clicking the mouse button to get a right click menu, or you may like tapping the touchpad with two fingers to get your right click menu. With all three methods, you get the same result, just different ways of getting there. Once you get used to tapping your fingers or using two fingers on the touchpad while clicking the button you will have a hard time going back to control clicking.

I hope this helps!