A visual shortcut panel for your Mac trackpad. Summon a panel, point at a button by where your finger is on the trackpad, lift to run it.
Download · Install guide · 中文
Status: early release. So far tested only on a Magic Trackpad with macOS 27. Built-in trackpads, Intel Macs and macOS 14–26 are unverified — reports welcome.
Trackpad gesture tools make you memorize a set of swipes. TouchOS shows your actions as a panel on screen and maps the trackpad onto it by position, so you look and pick rather than recall.
- Tap, then hold. Tap once with one finger and hold right after; the panel appears.
- Move your finger. Its position on the trackpad selects a button.
- Lift to run. Or press the trackpad to run and keep the panel open, or press and hold to repeat. Lifting away from any button just closes the panel.
While a panel is open, swipe two fingers up or down to switch panels, pinch to see them all, and hold the center close button to edit.
- Panels — any number, as grids (buttons can span cells) or rings, edited visually in Settings. Common, Window, Media and Numpad panels are included.
- Actions — keyboard shortcuts, typing text, opening apps / URLs / files, shell commands, AppleScript, Shortcuts, media and system controls, window placement, and volume and brightness sliders.
- Triggers — tap-then-hold, three- or four-finger tap, or tap-then-hold from a corner or edge of the trackpad. Enable several and bind each to its own panel.
- Appearance — three themes, with your choice of accent color and panel transition.
- Configuration — a JSON file at
~/Library/Application Support/TouchOS/config.jsonwith automatic backups, import / export and optional iCloud sync. Scripts in an imported configuration must be confirmed one by one. - Also — per-app exclusions; English and Simplified Chinese.
Download the DMG from Releases (macOS-arm64 for Apple silicon, macOS-x64 for Intel) and drag TouchOS into Applications.
Requirements: macOS 14 or later and a Force Touch trackpad (built-in, or Magic Trackpad 2 or later).
TouchOS is self-signed and not notarized by Apple, so macOS blocks the first launch: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway. Details in the install guide.
Turning off the system's "Tap to Click" is recommended; otherwise the first tap of tap-then-hold also clicks.
- Accessibility — used to hold the cursor still while a panel is open, send keyboard shortcuts and place windows.
- Touch data — processed in memory only; never logged, stored or uploaded.
- Network — the only request is a daily version check against GitHub Releases, carrying no touch or configuration data. It can be turned off in Settings.
Trackpad contacts are read through MultitouchSupport, a private framework built into macOS (not a third-party component), because public APIs don't expose absolute finger positions. As a result, TouchOS can't be distributed on the Mac App Store, and a major macOS update may stop it working until it's adapted; the trackpad itself keeps behaving normally in that case.
See CONTRIBUTING.md. Design documents (in Chinese) live in docs/.