How to Right-Click on a Chromebook

You clicked where the right mouse button should be and nothing opened. Chromebook touchpads are one flat surface with no separate right button, so the secondary click is a gesture or a key combination instead.

Tap the touchpad with two fingers

Rest two fingers on the touchpad, slightly apart, and tap once. The context menu opens at the pointer. If a tap does nothing, press the touchpad down with two fingers resting on it, which works even when tap-to-click is off.

Hold Alt and click with one finger

Hold the Alt key, click the touchpad once with a single finger, then release Alt. The same menu appears. This is the fallback when one hand is occupied or when an older touchpad reads the two-finger gesture inconsistently.

Turn on tap-to-click

Open Settings, Device, Touchpad and switch on Enable tap-to-click. With it off, light taps are ignored and only a full press of the touchpad counts as a click, which is the usual reason the two-finger tap seems broken.

Use an external mouse or the touchscreen

Plug in or pair a mouse and the right button behaves exactly as it does on any other computer, with no setup. On a touchscreen Chromebook, touch and hold the item for about a second, then lift the finger. The menu opens where you pressed.

The two-finger tap is the one worth learning. It works the same way everywhere in ChromeOS: on web pages, on files in the Files app, on icons in the shelf, and on the desktop. The Alt and click method covers the same ground, but the gesture is faster once it becomes automatic.

If a menu opens and will not close. Press Esc, or click once on an empty part of the screen. On a school or work Chromebook, an administrator can remove items from the right-click menu, such as Inspect or Save image as, so a menu with fewer options than expected is a policy setting rather than a fault. Check chrome://policy to see what is applied.