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The app is Tactile, a macOS menu-bar utility that uses a compatible trackpad’s haptics to give you a physical cue when your pointer reaches a clickable control. It does not turn your MacBook into a touchscreen, and it is different from Apple’s “Tap to click” setting, which clicks when you tap the trackpad.

What Tactile does on a MacBook

Tactile is designed to make clickable controls easier to identify by adding a haptic cue as the pointer hovers over them. The developer describes support for controls such as buttons, links, checkboxes, menus, and tabs across apps. Rather than clicking or tapping the control for you, it signals that the pointer is over something clickable.

Apple describes haptic feedback as “the tactile response you feel from a Force Touch trackpad when you click, or when in supported apps you perform actions such as moving shapes, text or other objects into alignment.” Tactile applies that kind of physical response to pointer hover, according to the developer’s project documentation.

What you need before installing it

  • macOS 14.6 or later: This is the minimum version listed by the Tactile developer.
  • A Force Touch trackpad: The developer lists modern MacBook Air and MacBook Pro trackpads and Magic Trackpad as supported options. Apple notes that most modern Mac laptops have Force Touch, while trackpads without it use a mechanical click and do not provide Force Click haptics. Check your Mac’s model and settings rather than assuming its trackpad supports the feature.
  • Accessibility permission: Tactile asks for this permission so it can work with controls in other apps.

How to install and enable Tactile

  1. Open the Tactile project page and download Tactile.app from its GitHub releases.
  2. Move Tactile.app to your Applications folder, then launch it.
  3. When macOS requests Accessibility permission, grant it. Tactile should then appear in the menu bar.

How it differs from macOS Tap to click

Apple’s built-in Tap to click setting lets you register a click by tapping the trackpad rather than pressing it. It changes how you perform a click; it does not provide Tactile’s described hover-related cue. macOS also supports Force Click and other trackpad gestures, documented in Apple’s MacBook Pro trackpad guide and its pointing devices guidance.

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Coverage and security considerations

The developer offers an optional Chrome extension intended to improve Tactile’s coverage of custom buttons on web pages. It is not required for the basic app, and the documentation does not guarantee that every control on every website or in every app will be detected.

The developer says Tactile is notarized by Apple and provides source code. Those are the project’s own statements, not an independent security assessment. The reviewed project information does not establish a current release number or independently confirm compatibility model by model.

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