Right-clicking
You may Control-click (with a single button mouse and the Control key on the keyboard) or right-click (with a multi-button mouse) on items in Mac OS X to perform extra actions. The main actions you can take:
- Pop-up a contextual menu with more commands
- Pop-up Dock menus to control applications or navigate through folders in the "Mac OS X Dock".
Mac OS X supports multi-button USB mice out of the box. As of this writing, Apple has traditionally bundled only single-button mice with Macintosh computers, but began including a multi-button mouse (known as the Mighty Mouse) with many of its computers in 2005.
If you wish to add a multi-button mouse to your Mac OS X computer, get a USB mouse that has two or more buttons. A popular choice is a mouse with two regular buttons ("left" and "right") and a scroll wheel (which sometimes acts as a third button you can click with), but there are many variations of mice (and related input devices like trackballs) with even more buttons and controls.
Mac OS X provides built-in support for mice with up to three buttons -- left click, right click, and a scroll wheel. As of Mac OS X versions 10.3.9 and 10.4.1, there is built-in support for more functions on Apple's multi-button Mighty Mouse.
Mac OS 9 and earlier support multi-button USB mice, but do not provide any default functions tied to the right button or the scroll wheel.
Whether you have Mac OS X or Mac OS classic, you can add support for extra buttons and functions by installing mouse driver software from the vendor. Please visit the mouse vendor's Web site for more details.
