Cursor Control Modes and Other Gestures

Screens for iOS offers two cursor control modes: Touch Mode and Trackpad Mode. It also supports other gestures as well.

Touch Mode

By default, Screens uses touch-based gestures to control your remote computer. With Touch Mode, Screens takes care of moving the remote cursor so you don't have to.

If you prefer to move the remote cursor as you would with a mouse or a trackpad, you can enable Trackpad Mode instead.

Basic Touch Mode Gestures

These gestures will be translated into mouse commands and sent to the remote computer:

Tap to click.

Double-tap to double-click.

Tap with Two Fingers for a secondary-click (right-click).

Tap with Three Fingers for a middle-click.

Scroll with Two Fingers vertically or horizontally.

Hold one finger down until a purple signal appears to drag windows and files, select text, etc.

Hold two fingers down until a purple signal appears to move the remote cursor around.

Trackpad Mode

If you prefer to move the remote cursor as you would with a mouse or a trackpad, enable Trackpad Mode in the app settings, under More Settings.

Basic Trackpad Gestures

These gestures will be translated into mouse commands and sent to the remote computer:

Tap and move your finger around to move the remote cursor.

Tap to click.

Double-tap to double-click.

Tap with Two Fingers for a secondary-click (right-click).

Tap with Three Fingers for a middle-click.

Scroll with Two Fingers vertically or horizontally.

Hold one finger down until a purple signal appears to drag windows and files, select text, etc.

Other Supported Gestures

App Gestures

These gestures will interact with the app:

	Pinch in or out to zoom the display.
	Double-tap with two fingers to toggle into or out of fullscreen (bottom toolbar hidden).

Screen Edge Gestures

To perform these gestures, start swiping from your device edges towards the center in a straight line. Use these gestures to:

Unhide the Dock on macOS. Move quickly to one edge on the remote display. Show the menu bar when the app running on your remote Mac is in fullscreen mode.

NOTE: When the device keyboard is visible, perform the swipe up gesture over the shortcuts toolbar.

Hot Corners Gestures

Hot Corners are actions triggered when you move your mouse cursor to a corner of you Mac display. You can set Hot Corners in System Preferences → Desktop & Screen Saver → Hot Corners.

To trigger a Hot Corner, simply swipe from a screen-edge corner. Screens will take care of moving the cursor to that corner for you.

Three Fingers Swipe Gestures

Just like using your Magic Trackpad! Screens sends corresponding keyboard shortcuts for these actions. By default, Screens uses the default shortcuts from macOS:

Swipe up to launch Mission Control (⌃ ↑) Swipe down to show all windows for the current application (⌃ ↓) Swipe right to move left a space (⌃ ←) Swipe left to move right a space (⌃ →)

If you have different shortcuts than these in System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts, then you can either set them to what is suggested above or install Screens Connect on your Mac. Screens Connect takes care of sending the correct keyboard shortcuts to Screens so you don't have to worry about them. Moreover, it makes it easy to connect to your Mac when you're away. See Installing Screens Connect for macOS for more information.

NOTE: If you're connecting to a Windows or Linux PC, the Swipe Up and Swipe Down gestures are disabled. The Swipe Left and Swipe Right gestures are associated to the Alt-Tab shortcut, which will display the app switcher on the remote computer.

Troubleshooting

If one or more gestures aren't working, make sure that you're signed into Screens Connect on the remote computer using the same Screens ID as is being used on the Screens device you're connecting from.

Is your Mac is running macOS 10.14 Mojave? You will need to change your keyboard shortcuts because of a bug Apple introduced. More details here.

If this isn't the problem, on the remote Mac, try resetting assigned shortcuts.

1. Launch System Preferences.
2. Click Keyboard.
3. Click the Shortcuts tab.
4. Click Restore Defaults.

macOS 10.14 Mojave

Unfortunately macOS 10.14 broke all keyboard shortcuts that contains modifier keys and arrows. We've notified Apple about it but haven't heard back yet. In the meantime, the workaround is to change the shortcuts via System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and use other keys than arrows.

For example, you could use CTRL-SHIFT-M for Mission Control instead of CTRL-SHIFT-UP and so forth. Screens Connect should pick those changes up and forward them to Screens.

You'll find more details in this article.