Force Click and Force Touch (now called 3D Touch) are able to perform secondary actions by detecting pressure placed on a Mac Trackpad, but some users find that it can either be too easy or too difficult to activate. Fortunately the Mac provides a simple way to adjust the amount of touch pressure necessary to trigger Force Click in Mac OS X, so if you’d like to switch it up you can easily change this setting on a compatible Mac, MacBook, or MacBook Pro.
Obviously you’ll need a Force Click and 3D Touch capable Mac trackpad to have this option, any 2015 or later model year MacBook Pro and the Magic Trackpad 2 has the ability while older models and trackpads do not.
How to Change Force Click Pressure on Trackpads with Mac OS X
You’ll need Force Click and haptic feedback enabled to be able to adjust the pressure of the feature, if you chose to disable Force Click on a Mac trackpad you’ll want to turn that back on before this will be functional as intended:
- GO to the Apple menu and choose “System Preferences” then go to “Trackpad
- Select the “Point & Click” tab, be sure that “Force click and haptic feedback” is checked to be ON
- Look for the “Click” slider switch and change this setting to fit the desired Force Click pressure:
- Light – a gentle press activates a click and Force Click
- Medium – the default option for click and Force Click pressure
- Firm – firm deliberate click pressure must be placed on the trackpad to activate Force Click
This can be a nice change for Mac trackpad users, particularly if they discovered they’re accidentally enabling the force click when it wasn’t intended, and also for users who found it too difficult to activate Force Click based on the default pressure setting.
Force Click is basically 3D Touch for the Mac, it wouldn’t be surprising to have the names merged at some point to 3D Touch given the feature and functionality is quite similar on both iPhone and Mac OS X with compatible trackpads. Speaking of the iPhone side of things, you can also adjust the pressure sensitivity of 3D Touch on iPhone as well, which is just as useful if you find yourself having difficulties on the mobile side of things too.
