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Mice and trackpads · Apple Magic Trackpad

Apple Magic Trackpad 2

17owners with an opinion
80%of verdicts positive
7/3positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for ease of use and design; criticized for ergonomics and performance.

What owners wrote

Likes it
I exclusively use trackpads like Magic Trackpad 2 when I'm on MacOS. But I exclusively use a mouse when I'm running Windows and Linux. MacOS just seems more tailored to the touchpad experience. Windows and Linux more tailored to the mouse experience.
Likes it
This is the way, though. I do exactly the same thing. I was a trackball user for many years on Windows (due to wrist & arm pain from mouse use), but the Magic Trackpad works way better with macOS than trackballs (primarily because the Kensington software is garbage).
Likes it
I bought a ZSA Moonlander a few years ago and it went a bit like this: 1. Unpack and immediately set up a Colemak-DH layout. Customize the layout twice a day for 4 months. This is PAINFUL, slow and unproductive. 2. Got comfortable with Colemak and stopped doing any typing exercises. Still tweaking my layout. 3. Didn’t know where to position my mouse, so I got an Apple Trackpad 2 that sits beautifully between the two halves. Works great on Linux. Keep the mouse around for gaming. 4. Finally productive. I make minor changes to my layout every 6 months. Colemak is ingrained in my muscle memory. It’s just so comfortable. And don’t worry about forgetting how to type QWERTY; the secret to retain muscle memory is that an ortholinear split keyboard is sufficiently different from a regular one that it’s like learning a completely new instrument. Hard at first, but it would be hard even if the layout was familiar; might as well then switch to something better than QWERTY. I love my split keyboard now. Games are a bit annoying but I can easily switch to my gaming-QWERTY-hybrid layout (QWERTY on the left hand, colemak w/ tweaks on the right). Specialist tools like Blender might need minor rebinding to find comfort. When I type on a regular laptop, I find shift+numbers for symbols to be hilariously unergonomic compared to my symbol layer, I don’t know how the hell people cope doing Rust or Haskell or even Lisp.
Neutral
Magic Trackpad 2 and (Mac) Magic Keyboards appear as USB HID devices when connected to a computer via Lightning-to-USB (-A or -C) cable. One annoyance is that macOS automatically Bluetooth pairs with these devices when connected via USB, overwriting any existing pairing, but this shouldn't matter for purely wired scenarios. For switching Bluetooth devices more generally, observe that most Bluetooth controllers are USB devices; with a bit of effort — mostly just copy/pasting the device pairing keys across all connected hosts — they can be switched just like any other USB peripheral (YMMV with "intelligent" USB KVM switches that virtualize USB HID device connections). IME the connection delay is a couple seconds longer than switching wired USB HID devices directly, but entirely reasonable for typical KVM use cases. Note here that "most Bluetooth controllers are USB devices" even extends to internal Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo cards, which are commonly M.2 key A or E (= PCIe + USB 2.0 + …), or M.2 key A or E preinstalled on a mostly passive PCIe adapter, with a separate cable connection to a USB port or motherboard USB header used exclusively for Bluetooth. This turns out to be a surprisingly useful implementation detail: on one of my work desktops, I'm currently virtual USB-switching the Bluetooth controller on an Intel BE200 PCIe card between a Linux host and a Windows VM running on that host, while keeping Wi-Fi connected to the host. I have a matching hot key set up in each OS to…
Doesn’t like it
As someone who really cares about a good trackpad and owns a Magic Trackpad 2, I never understood people who put Apple ones on pedestal. It's macOS that had good trackpad handling sooner than other OSes/DEs; their hardware was always comparable to other laptops from the same class. The only thing they actually differentiated in was haptic feedback, and it's mostly just a gimmick unless you happen to care about making tactile clicks as quiet as possible. Sure, if you bought some shitty cheap laptop you got a shitty cheap trackpad on it, but that's hardly surprising.
Doesn’t like it
I was just thinking today about whether I'd enjoy a thumb joystick on this device, given that trackpads and I agree less and less these days (I have been on various trackballs for years on desktops to fend off RSI-like symptoms... recently tried giving the Magic Trackpad 2 another go because gestures and pixel-perfect scrolling rock, aaaaaand welcome back wrist pain! Back to my Ploopy Adept I went) That, or trying to figure out a mini-trackball to fit where Next's trackpad is, maybe something sized like Pocket Reform. I don't love thumb trackballs (I'm a fingerball kinda guy), but I could make do.
Doesn’t like it
Speaking of, can you buy a Magic Trackpad that uses USB-C yet? I've got a Magic Trackpad 2 that requires this annoying special cable no one uses and it ends up making me buy trashy gas-station connectors to feed it power. Maybe we're still waiting for that one to make "sense for it's customers when the device was released". Good grief.
Recommends it
If you're looking for a better stationary setup, why not just add more monitors? It shouldn't be much different from using a KVM switch to access two different desktops. > I've read that the external trackpad is less good. That's news to me. I daily drive the Magic Trackpad 2 and it feels as-good-as, if not better, than my 2018 Macbook Pro.
Recommends it
I use gestures all the time on my Magic Trackpad 2. Let's say I'm just surfing the web on my iMac. I might use: - two-finger swipe left and right to go back and forwards - two-finger double tap to zoom in and out - pinch to zoom in and out - pinch to view all tabs - three-finger double tap to look up a word in the built-in dictionary, which I do a lot to get the definition of Japanese words in English - three-finger drag to copy images or downloads to a folder or into another window, especially if I'm editing a document - four-finger swipe up to switch to another application's window, especially if I'm dragging something - four-finger swipe down to switch to another browser window I'm using these gestures frequently to efficiently move things around when I'm editing a document, making a presentation, or even when restoring a file to a previous version or copying something out of a file's previous version to drop into the current version.
Likes it
Do you mean superior to trackpads generally or have you specifically tried and rejected the Magic Trackpad 2? I ask because like the parent poster I love the Trackpad 2 on macOS but I hate most other trackpads when using them with Windows/Linux. Meanwhile I also hate using most mice I've tried on macOS including the Apple ones but am fine with mice on Windows/Linux. I imagine there are probably tracking speed and acceleration settings that would make the unpleasant combinations work better but I usually give up after making a few simple tweaks. I wasted a lot of time tweaking low level Synaptics parameters in the config flies when trying to make the Magic Trackpad work well for me on Linux and I think I've exhausted my lifetime supply of patience for excessive pointer setting adjustments.
Likes it
Back in those days, ThinkWiki was an excellent resource. Not sure nowadays? I ran Mac OS X (as it was called back then) on my ThinkPad R61 back in the days (2008 or so?). Everything worked, but I did have to replace the Intel WiFi with an Atheros one and fiddle with all kind of options (it is likely easier these days). One or the other supported packet injection. Mac OS X (I think it was 10.6 or 10.7?) did boot a bit slower than 'Linux' though (probably ran Ubuntu with GNOME 2 back in those days; with a more lightweight WM/DE it'd have been even quicker). The TrackPoint is one of those amazing tools I miss on a Mac. However, the Magic Trackpad 2 works on Linux and Windows. See this HN discussion [1] for details. Together with a HHKB with BT I have an excellent keyboard and pointer device supporting BT and USB. I even have carry bags to protect both devices. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18273559
Neutral
Okay I'm on 4.18.14 and just tried plugging my MT2. It _basically_ works, but the trackpad feel is as bad that of my Thinkpad's. And none of the gestures, including two finger tap, works. EDIT: looking at dmesg, it is registered as `hid-generic`. So not using the new driver?
Recommends it
I agree about the matte screen thing. I had one of the last laptops they offered with the matte option, and I used it for 5 years until a month ago, when I bought the rMBP a few weeks before Apple released the crippled new model. (The rumors were extremely accurate coming up to the launch, so I knew I wouldn't be interested in the new model.) I was skeptical about the haptic touchpad, but now after using it for a while (I got a Magic Trackpad 2 a few months ago) I'm extremely impressed and feel like it is better than a physical click in every way. I think it is better on my RSI as well.