Thursday, April 14, 2011, 06:00 pm

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: new multitouch gestures, Dock integration for Exposé, Launchpad, Mission Control

By AppleInsider Staff

New multitouch gestures in Lion: 2 finger F10

Apple has also made it easier to access these functions, using intuitive new multitouch gestures. The first is a two fingered upward swipe on a Dock icon, which now invokes the F10 "app windows Exposé," displaying that app's windows currently on the desktop and presenting smaller proxies of its currently Dock-minimized windows.

For some apps, this gesture works even when the app isn't running. There's no way (and no sense) in invoking F10 for an app that isn't actively running, but in Lion, a two finger swipe up on certain Dock icons (such as Preview) shows recently opened files, even when the app isn't running.

When launched, Lion's F10 shows the app's active and Dock-minimized windows, as well as this new row of recent documents you might want to open again (as is visible below for Preview, which has one window open and shows several recent documents below it).

This new feature is not presented anywhere in the interface, including the Dock System Preferences pane, but works even on older machines with limited multitouch capabilities.


This new gesture replaces the "mouse click and hold" method of invoking the same thing. In Lion, a click and hold on a Dock icon brings up its standard contextual menu (identical to control clicking), with one new option to "Show All Windows," a manual method of invoking the same thing as the two finger swipe or an F10 key press.


On page 3 of 3: New multitouch gestures in Lion: 3 & 4 fingers.