If you’ve followed my tips you’ll notice that I like gestures and all the new, revised, or previously existing gestures have a whole new life for me after the release of Mac OS X Lion. Now I use gestures more often on my Mac than ever before.
I’ve talked about some of my favorites and today I’ll share another one of those with you. I’ll show you how you can look up words in the Mac OS X dictionary with two taps on your track pad.
If that doesn’t work for you check you System preferences for the Trackpad under Point & Click then make sure that you have Look up checked.
David W. Martin has more than 20 years of experience in the industry as a programmer, systems and business analyst, author, and consultant. David has written for CNET’s iPhoneatlas.com, MacLife.com, CultofMac.com, BYTE.com and recently for aNewDoman.net. He comes to Cult of Mac’s website with deep knowledge and passion for the all things Apple. Follow David on Twitter @david_w_martin or see what he’s up to now at davidwmartin.com.
20 responses to “Look Up Words In The Mac OS X Dictionary And Wikipedia With Two Taps [OS X Tips]”
Yes great but how to do in none apple app such as google chrome?
Unfortunately will not work with Firefox, but works fine with Mail and Safari.
You have to wait for Google to support it, but any app can do it with just a few lines of code. Mozilla and Google are just slow to support the new stuff I guess.
Just to correct or add to the sentence “<…> will show the word’s definition from both a dictionary and Wikipedia.” It depends on how many dictionaries you have as well as order of ones in the Dictionary.app
In my case along side to British dictionary I have one called Dictionary as well as some another languages and Wikipedia. Results after double three fingers tap on a word would bring me results from all these dictionaries (not “both” as it is mentioned in the article above) with exception from Dictionary (US), probably because it duplicates the British one and in Dictionaries hierarchy made by me stays lower than British.
Too bad you can’t look up how to use commas.
Does not work with Opera either.
Bummer that this only works in Apple’s apps like the slow Safari. 3rd party apps need to add support for this like Google’s Chrome.
Works fine in Google Chrome.
Edit: I’m using Chrome Canary, which may have added support for it.
Thanks…
Great it works in Canary
I have it selected, in Safari, and doesn’t work.
Update: Got it. Taps. Not clicks.