How to Right-Click on a Mac

The menu you are after opens on a right-click, but a Mac trackpad has no right button and a Magic Mouse has no visible one either. The secondary click is still there, it is a gesture rather than a separate button, and it can be switched off. Setting it the way you want takes about a minute.

Click or tap with two fingers on the trackpad

Rest two fingers on the trackpad and press down. If Tap to click is on, a two-finger tap does the same thing. Keep both fingers over the item itself rather than beside it, and the shortcut menu opens under the pointer.

Hold Control and click

Hold Control, then click once with a single finger. macOS treats this as a right-click in every app, and it works no matter how the trackpad or mouse is configured.

Turn on Secondary click in System Settings

Open System Settings, Trackpad, Point & Click. Under Secondary click, pick Click or Tap with Two Fingers, Click in Bottom Right Corner, or Click in Bottom Left Corner. The setting being off is the usual reason two fingers do nothing. On macOS Monterey and earlier the same controls sit in System Preferences, Trackpad.

Set the right side of a Magic Mouse to secondary click

Open System Settings, Mouse, then set Secondary click to Click Right Side. The mouse surface senses which half you pressed, so no second button is needed. Any ordinary USB or Bluetooth mouse needs nothing configured at all: its right button already works.

Control-click is the fallback worth learning. It survives a wiped settings file, a borrowed Mac, a shared machine, and a mouse you have never seen before. Two-finger clicking is faster day to day, but Control-click is the one that always works.

A long press is not a right-click. Holding the pointer over an item and waiting does nothing on macOS. That gesture belongs to iPhone and iPad, and looking for it here is what leaves people convinced their trackpad is broken.