Best Trackpad Gesture App for Mac in 2026: 6 Options Compared
If you want one app that can drive every input device you own and automate almost anything, BetterTouchTool is the most capable choice, and it costs less than Trill with a much longer trial. If you want trackpad gestures, a Hyper Key and window snapping that work within minutes, with a tap under your finger when a gesture lands, Trill starts you with ready-made sets. Multitouch is a general gesture app with mouse support for $15.99. If all you want is a middle click, WheelClick does that for free, and if your gestures are about windows, Swish is built for exactly that.
Every fact about the other apps below comes from their own websites, checked in October 2026. Prices change, so look again before you buy. Trill is ours; it’s in the list where it fits, with its limits spelled out.
What to look for in a gesture app
Most people arrive with a short list: a middle click, a gesture to close a tab, a swipe to send a window to half the screen. Hold the apps up against that list, not against the longest feature page.
Which gestures it hears. Finger counts, taps versus clicks versus swipes, edges and corners, and whether it does pinches or drawn shapes. If your gesture isn’t on the list, nothing else matters.
What a gesture can run. A keyboard shortcut covers most needs. Scripts, Apple Shortcuts and window moves cover the rest.
How you set it up. Some apps hand you a blank list to fill. Others start you with ready-made gestures. The right one depends on whether you enjoy building a setup or just want it working.
Clashes with macOS. macOS already uses several multi-finger gestures, such as four fingers to switch Spaces. If you give one of them a second job, both fire. Check how each app handles that.
Other devices. A Magic Mouse, a Stream Deck or a game controller narrows the field quickly.
The 6 options
1. macOS Trackpad settings (built in, free)
Before installing anything, open System Settings and click Trackpad. Apple’s own gestures include tap to click, a two-finger secondary click, smart zoom, swiping between pages, a three-finger tap for Look Up, swipes for Mission Control, App Exposé and switching between full-screen apps, and a thumb-and-three-finger spread or pinch for Show Desktop and Apps. Apple says you can turn a gesture off there or change the type of gesture. Three finger drag lives in Accessibility settings.
Good at: the gestures every Mac user should know, with nothing to install.
Falls short: the list is fixed. You can switch Apple’s gestures on and off and adjust them, but you can’t add a new one or point it at an action of your own, and there’s no middle click.
Price: free with macOS.
2. BetterTouchTool (from $15)
BetterTouchTool is the broadest app in this category by a long way. On the trackpad it handles taps, clicks and swipes with one to five fingers, corner clicks, edge swipes, tip taps (rest fingers and tap with another) and drawing gestures, and any gesture can do different things in different apps. It also covers the Magic Mouse, Logitech mice, keyboards, Stream Deck and other macro pads, game controllers, the Touch Bar, the Apple and Siri Remote, MIDI controllers and a companion app for iPhone and iPad. Beyond input there’s window snapping, a clipboard manager, a screenshot tool, a Spotlight-style launcher and custom AI agents.
Good at: reshaping nearly everything about how you drive a Mac, if you enjoy building a setup piece by piece. It costs less than most of this list and the trial is long.
Falls short: the sheer range means more to learn and set up before the trackpad does what you want. When a gesture you assign is one macOS already uses, BetterTouchTool’s advice is to turn the system version off in System Settings, so spotting the clash is up to you.
Price: $15 for a Standard purchase with two years of updates (you keep the last version you received), or $25 for Lifetime with every update, depending on country and taxes. One purchase covers all your personal Macs, and it’s also part of Setapp’s subscription. The trial is 45 days with no account. It needs macOS 12 Monterey or later.
3. Multitouch ($15.99)
Multitouch adds trackpad and Magic Mouse gestures with a large set of actions for browsers, keystrokes, clicks and more. It also brings window management with drag-to-snap areas and keyboard shortcuts, turns a key into a Hyper key, lets you click with a key, remaps mouse buttons, and can make a keyboard shortcut that runs a script.
Good at: a general gesture app with mouse support and window snapping, for about half the price of Trill, on Macs going back to macOS 10.15.
Falls short: its site doesn’t list the gestures it hears in detail, so use the 30-day trial to check that yours are there before paying.
Price: $15.99 at checkout in the US at the time of writing. One purchase can be active on 3 Macs at a time, and there’s a 30-day free trial. It needs macOS 10.15 or later, on Apple silicon or Intel.
4. Trill ($29 once)
Trill starts with six ready-made Gesture Sets, each a few gestures for one kind of work, switched on in a click, and the welcome suggests the sets that fit the apps already on your Mac. The Everyday set makes a 3-finger tap a middle click. The Browser set (Safari, Chrome, Arc, Firefox, Edge, Brave and Orion) gives you a 4-finger tap for a new tab, a 4-finger swipe down to close it and up to reopen it, and a TipTap left or right to change tabs. Others cover windows, media, writing apps and developer tools.
When a set doesn’t have what you want, press New gesture and do it on the trackpad. Trill names the gesture it saw, you pick what it does, and the rule reads back as a sentence (“In Safari, a 5-finger tap plays or pauses music”). It hears taps and swipes with three, four or five fingers, TipTap, swipes in from an edge, slides along the left, right or top edge, and clicks in the corners of a Force Touch trackpad, and it can run more than a hundred actions: any keyboard shortcut, an app, file or link, an Apple Shortcut, an AppleScript or a shell command, and window moves.
On a Force Touch trackpad it taps back the moment it knows what you did: a tick when a gesture lands, a step as you slide along an edge, and a “Nothing here” pulse when a gesture has no job in the app in front. If one of your gestures is one macOS already uses, Trill keeps yours off, says “Blocked by macOS”, and offers the fix in one click; Put back restores every macOS setting it changed. It also turns Caps Lock into a Hyper Key (once you switch it on) and snaps windows you drag to an edge or a corner.
Good at: getting the trackpad doing more within minutes, without building a setup from scratch.
Falls short: it’s trackpad, keyboard and mouse buttons 4 and 5 only. There are no Magic Mouse gestures, no pinches or rotations, no one- or two-finger taps, no drawn gestures, and no Stream Deck or Touch Bar. It doesn’t import BetterTouchTool presets. Haptics need a Force Touch trackpad. It costs the most here and its trial is the shortest, and it needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
Pick something else if you use a Magic Mouse or want pinch gestures (Multitouch, Swish or BetterTouchTool), you’re on macOS 12 or 13, you only want a middle click (WheelClick is free), or you want weeks to decide rather than a day.
Price: $29 once, not a subscription, for up to 3 Macs. Free for 24 hours with every feature and no card, and 7 days to ask for a refund.
5. Swish ($16)
Swish is about windows. Its site lists 30 window, Dock and menu bar gestures: swipe on a window’s title bar to snap it, pinch in to close, pinch out to go full screen, snap to 2x2, 3x2 or 3x3 grids, and move windows between screens, and it works with Spaces. Swish says it’s designed primarily for the Magic Trackpad and also works with the Magic Mouse.
Good at: managing windows by gesture alone, including pinches, which Trill doesn’t do.
Falls short: everything its site describes is about windows, the Dock and the menu bar. For gestures that switch tabs, control media or press shortcuts in particular apps, look at the general apps above.
Price: $16, active on two Macs at a time, with a 14-day trial. Also on Setapp. It isn’t in the Mac App Store. It needs macOS 12 or later, on Apple silicon or Intel.
6. WheelClick (free, or $4.99 for more)
WheelClick does one thing: the middle click a trackpad doesn’t have. A three-finger click or a three-finger tap sends a middle click, free with no time limit. The one-time upgrade adds fn+click and other click gestures, Magic Mouse support (in the direct download only), plugins for middle-drag, three-finger swipes and autoscroll, and per-app control. It’s the successor to the free MiddleClick, from the same developer.
Good at: a free, single-purpose fix for closing tabs and opening links in the background.
Falls short: it’s a middle-click tool, not a general gesture app.
Price: free for three-finger click and tap. $4.99 once for the rest, with a 14-day trial. It’s on the Mac App Store (trackpad only), as a notarized download, and through Homebrew.
Comparison at a glance
| Trackpad gestures | Beyond the trackpad | Price | Trial | Macs | macOS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| macOS Trackpad settings | Apple’s fixed set | None | Free | None needed | Any | Any |
| BetterTouchTool | One to five fingers, tip taps, corners, edges, drawing | Mouse, keyboard, Stream Deck, Touch Bar, controllers, windows, clipboard, launcher | $15 or $25, also Setapp | 45 days | All your personal Macs | 12 or later |
| Multitouch | Trackpad and Magic Mouse gestures | Window snapping, Hyper key, button remapping | $15.99 | 30 days | 3 at a time | 10.15 or later |
| Trill | 3, 4 and 5-finger taps and swipes, TipTap, edges, corner clicks | Hyper Key, window snapping, mouse buttons 4 and 5, haptics | $29 once | 24 hours | 3 | 14 or later |
| Swish | About 30 window, Dock and menu bar gestures, with pinches | Magic Mouse | $16, also Setapp | 14 days | 2 at a time | 12 or later |
| WheelClick | Three-finger click and tap for middle click | Magic Mouse in the paid direct version | Free, or $4.99 once | 14 days for paid | Not stated | Not stated |
Which one to pick
- You’ve never changed your trackpad settings: start with Apple’s own, in System Settings, Trackpad.
- You want one app for every device and enjoy building a setup: BetterTouchTool.
- You want a general gesture app with mouse support for less: Multitouch.
- You want the trackpad doing more today, with ready-made sets and a tap you can feel: Trill. Trill vs BetterTouchTool compares the two in detail.
- Your gestures are all about windows: Swish.
- You just want a middle click: WheelClick, or read how to middle click on a Mac trackpad first.
Questions
Can I add my own gestures without an app?
No. System Settings, Trackpad lets you turn Apple’s gestures on or off and change their type, but not add new ones or give a gesture an action of your own. For that you need one of the apps above.
Will a gesture app clash with the gestures macOS already uses?
It can. If you give a gesture macOS uses (such as four fingers to switch Spaces) a second job, both fire. BetterTouchTool’s advice is to turn the system gesture off in System Settings. Trill notices the clash itself, keeps your gesture off and offers a one-click fix. When a trackpad gesture clashes with macOS covers it step by step.
Which gesture apps work with a Magic Mouse?
BetterTouchTool, Multitouch and Swish say they do, and WheelClick does in its paid direct download. Trill and Apple’s Trackpad settings don’t add Magic Mouse gestures.
Is there a free trackpad gesture app?
Apart from Apple’s own settings, WheelClick’s middle click is the free option here, with no time limit. The others are paid after a trial, from Trill’s 24 hours to BetterTouchTool’s 45 days.