🟠 Tactile Feedback: The First Thing I Do (Even Before Installing Raycast)

I'm about to tell you about a macOS setting so fundamental to my computing experience that I enable it before I even install my browser.

Before Raycast.
Before my IDE.
Before I sign into iCloud.

First thing: Tactile Feedback.

What Is Tactile Feedback?

In System Settings → Trackpad, there's an option called "Force Click and haptic feedback."

Turn that on. Now go deeper: there's a hidden setting (requires terminal command) that enables haptic feedback for literally everything.

Every click. Every interaction. Every UI response.

Your trackpad will now give you physical feedback for digital actions.

Why This Matters

Computers are fundamentally abstract. You're manipulating pixels by moving your fingers across glass. There's no physical resistance, no tactile confirmation that you've done the thing.

Haptic feedback bridges that gap. It makes digital actions feel PHYSICAL.

• When you click a button, you don't just see it highlight—you FEEL the click.
• When you drag a window, you feel it snap into place.
• When you pull to refresh, you feel the tension and release.

It's the difference between touchscreen typing and mechanical keyboard typing. Same input, radically different experience.

The Hidden Haptics

The secret sauce is enabling system-wide haptics, not just trackpad clicks.

Standard disclaimer: terminal commands can break things, use at own risk.

This unlocks:

• Haptic feedback for scrolling momentum
• Click feedback for all UI elements
• Subtle vibrations for edge resistance
• Physical confirmation for gestures

Why I Enable This First

Because once you feel it, you can't unfeel it. It becomes the baseline. Every interaction afterward builds on that foundation.

It's like the difference between a luxury car and a budget rental. The budget car works fine! It gets you from A to B! But the luxury car has weight to the steering, resistance in the pedals, feedback through the chassis. It feels connected.

Haptic feedback makes macOS feel connected.

The Productivity Angle

This isn't just about "nice to have" polish. It's about confirmation.

With haptic feedback, I KNOW I clicked the thing. I don't need to visually confirm. I felt it.

This matters more than you'd think. How many times have you clicked something and wondered "did that register?" So you click again. And now you've double-clicked. Oops.

Haptic feedback eliminates that uncertainty.

The Accessibility Angle

For people with visual processing differences, or anyone who benefits from multimodal feedback, this is genuinely assistive technology.

It's another sensory channel confirming your actions. It reduces cognitive load. It makes the system more approachable.

Why Nobody Talks About This

Because it's off by default, and most people don't dig into trackpad settings.

Also, it's hard to explain. "It makes your computer feel better" sounds vague and subjective.

But talk to anyone who's enabled system-wide haptics and then had to use a Mac without it. They'll immediately notice the absence. The system feels hollow. Dead. Unresponsive.

The Bird Poop Incident

I once had to emergency-clean my MacBook after a bird shit directly onto my keyboard (long story, involves a rooftop, questionable decisions, and hubris).

While my MacBook was in for repair, I used a backup machine. Worked fine. Same OS, same apps, same setup.

But it felt WRONG.

Took me a full day to realize why: no haptic feedback. I'd forgotten to enable it.

I enabled it. Instantly, the machine felt "right" again.

That's when I realized how fundamental this setting had become to my computing experience.

Try It

If you take one thing away from this article, let it be this: go into your trackpad settings and turn on haptic feedback.

Then come back and tell me I'm wrong.

(You won't. Because I'm not.)

This is the secret setting. The foundation. The thing that makes everything else feel better.

Before Raycast, before Arc, before anything: enable tactile feedback.

Trust me.