Mac Tip: Try Highlighting Text With A Single, Double, Or Triple Click »

This Mac tip is easy to miss, but super helpful when you need it – here's how to single, double, and triple clicking helps make highlighting the correct text easier.

July 20, 2023
1:33 pm

From @threehourcoffee (emphasis mine):

This mouse highlighting shortcut is a game-changer for me!!!

A friend (who’s not on twitter) just told me about it.

Had to share.

Made a video to demonstrate.

Double click, then drag, to highlight words not letters. pic.twitter.com/MPa51Ek4WT

This is one of those Mac tips that people probably haven’t heard of, or have so deeply engrained into their muscle memory that they didn’t realize it was a tip to give (I’m the latter).

Either way – make sure to try triple clicking to select entire paragraphs too.

Update: Antonio Bueno mentioned this additional tip to me on Discord:

Something related I discovered God-knows-when: You can make little adjustments to one side of the selection with shift+left arrow and shift+right arrow.

The nice detail is that the side depends on the direction of the selection: Select from right to left and the keys will modify the left side. Select from left to right, and it’s the right side that can be modified.

View the video on Twitter.