SideTrack is a replacement driver for the Apple MacBook, PowerBook and iBook trackpads. With SideTrack installed your standard trackpad becomes a powerful multi-button scrolling mouse.
Leave your external mouse at home and take full control over your trackpad:
Vertical scrolling at left or right edge of pad.
Horizontal scrolling at top or bottom edge of pad.
Map hardware button to left or right click.
Map trackpad taps to no action, left click, left click drag (with or without drag lock), or right click.
Map trackpad corner taps to
What's New
Version 1.6:
[FEATURE] Compatible with the public release of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).
[FEATURE] Support November 2007 MacBook models.
[BUG] Workaround Leopard built-in keyboard driver dependency by supplying a wrapper keyboard driver with SideTrack.
[BUG] Change trackpad tap click timing logic to accommodate Leopard applications with slow event loops (Finder, possibly others).
Requirements
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.2 or later, supported MacBook, MacBook Pro, PowerBook or iBook model.
Very nice application, unfortunately it can't do two finger gestures, so bye bye two finger scrolling in installed MacBooks. Actually the best of this software in my opinion is touch pad corners shortcuts, you can make a corner to activate dashboard and so on, Apple should update the drivers in older macs, I bet a lot of multiple gestures found in the new MacBook Aluminum can be made in the old MacBook also!
Overall it´s great if you are ready to loose two ginger scrolling!
I've used it for a while now and SideTrack does what it says it will but seemed to make my physical button stop working. I have switched to FFScroll and now everything works. Maybe it's my old iBook but that would be one heck of a coincidence. Still impressive overall.
Amazing piece of software. Don't leave Leopard without it!
Apple's two-fingered scrolling is a real pain (literally) - to scroll vertically when your hand is placed diagonally requires an uncomfortable and awkward hand position.
In addition, Sidetrack allows for so much more configuration than Apple allows. It's just an extension of your hands.
I was a bit wary of using the current version on Leopard, but there has not been a single glitch.
Seriously, I thought about going back to Tiger if this app didn't work with Leopard. My favorite 3rd party app!
Alex's tech support is outstanding.
Worth every penny of its $100 shareware fee. (What?? It's less than that?)
Two finger scrolling is never awkward. Your fingers don't have to be side by side when scrolling vertically - you can have one on the top and one on the bottom if you so wish.
Hiya!!
Thanks - I didn't know you could put the fingers vertically!
Nonetheless, I still prefer one-finger scrolling. The less I have to do/use, the better for me. Something about the simplicity ... one finger does it all!
There's also this matter of fingernails ..
Anyhoo, it's all under the category of personal prefs - I so like using only one digit, and I like how I can so explicitly configure my trackpad to satisfy my smallest desires!
I did not like having only the few prefs available in the OS, and so relieved when this was made Leo-compatible!!! Whew!
To each his/her own, yes?
Still, thanks for the info - it will be nice to be able to share it if I need to.
An essential piece of software for Mac laptops. It's been painful using Leopard without it. Apple's similar features in recent laptops pale in comparison to the ease-of-use that SideTrack offers.
The developer is very clear that it should be considered an unstable beta. That being said, instal went smoothly and I haven't experienced any system instability yet.
An absolutely must-have utility; run, don't walk to get this. When I had (ultimately minor) configuration issues with 1.5 during its beta phase the developer always took the time to answer my questions.
I know Alex has worked long and hard on this release, so I congratulate him on finally getting 1.5 shipped.
I'm torn on SideTrack. On the one hand, I prefer the scrolling behavior of iScroll2 (two fingers, anywhere on the trackpad). I find it difficult to engage SideTrack with edge only scrolling, I have to make the scroll area large to reliably engage it, but then I hit it accidentally sometimes. For me, the iScroll behavior is much easier.
On the other hand, SideTrack has much better tap mapping functions. I love that I can map the right upper corner to right click, the left upper corner to middle click (open browser in new tab), and the lower left corner to command-w (close tab in browser).
I like the features that Sidetrack offers, however I wish I could also have the option to keep some or all of the Apple features (two-finger right-click, two-finger scrolling especially). (Demoed this on a MacBook).
The pointer tracking also seemed a bit erratic to me compare to when I switched back to the default OS X trackpad pref pane.
Otherwise it's very cool and if the above-mentioned features were available I would most likely register.
WitchMD, the sleep problems you describe are definitely not normal. I'd appreciate it if you would contact me at the support addrees in the SideTrack ReadMe so I can get some additional information about your system.
Is there any way to get this working on 10.5? Is there an update likely? Or will we have to wait until 10.5's official release? XCode is so much harder when I have to manually scroll :(
i tried this and i really really liked it since i'm used to having a right clcik button (previous pc user) but then i noticed that my ibook G4 1.42 ghz wouldn't sleep with the lid on when i schedule it to sleep or when i manually put it to sleep. i didn't know sidetrack was causing the problem until i checked the console log and saw sidetrack being mentioned there. so i uninstalled sidetrack and now evrything is working fine, ibook sleeps normally again. too bad, cause i really like side track.
i am having problems with sidetrack loading in after booting up my machine...this just happened today - have been using this excellent app since inception w/out problem. a trip to system preferences seems to activate it....does anyone have a suggestion? tried emailing dev, but had my mail returned with an error. powerbook g4 867/panther os
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SideTrack is a replacement driver for the Apple MacBook, PowerBook and iBook trackpads. With SideTrack installed your standard trackpad becomes a powerful multi-button scrolling mouse.
Leave your external mouse at home and take full control over your trackpad:
Vertical scrolling at left or right edge of pad.
Horizontal scrolling at top or bottom edge of pad.
Map hardware button to left or right click.
Map trackpad taps to no action, left click, left click drag (with or without drag lock), or right click.
Map trackpad corner taps to mouse buttons 1-6 or simulated keystrokes.
Extensive control over accidental input filtering.
+1
-4
SurfSpirit reviewed on 13 Dec 2008
Overall it´s great if you are ready to loose two ginger scrolling!
+10
Does it have an option to use a trackpap TAP as a right-click?
+322
+11
-1
bipwop reviewed on 17 Nov 2007
Apple's two-fingered scrolling is a real pain (literally) - to scroll vertically when your hand is placed diagonally requires an uncomfortable and awkward hand position.
In addition, Sidetrack allows for so much more configuration than Apple allows. It's just an extension of your hands.
I was a bit wary of using the current version on Leopard, but there has not been a single glitch.
Seriously, I thought about going back to Tiger if this app didn't work with Leopard. My favorite 3rd party app!
Alex's tech support is outstanding.
Worth every penny of its $100 shareware fee. (What?? It's less than that?)
+5
-1
Thanks - I didn't know you could put the fingers vertically!
Nonetheless, I still prefer one-finger scrolling. The less I have to do/use, the better for me. Something about the simplicity ... one finger does it all!
There's also this matter of fingernails ..
Anyhoo, it's all under the category of personal prefs - I so like using only one digit, and I like how I can so explicitly configure my trackpad to satisfy my smallest desires!
I did not like having only the few prefs available in the OS, and so relieved when this was made Leo-compatible!!! Whew!
To each his/her own, yes?
Still, thanks for the info - it will be nice to be able to share it if I need to.
+67
Tomis reviewed on 07 Nov 2007
The developer is very clear that it should be considered an unstable beta. That being said, instal went smoothly and I haven't experienced any system instability yet.
+81
rampancy reviewed on 28 Aug 2007
I know Alex has worked long and hard on this release, so I congratulate him on finally getting 1.5 shipped.
dadamac reviewed on 21 Oct 2006
many thanks!
+1
debtman7 reviewed on 02 Aug 2006
On the other hand, SideTrack has much better tap mapping functions. I love that I can map the right upper corner to right click, the left upper corner to middle click (open browser in new tab), and the lower left corner to command-w (close tab in browser).
I wish I could combine the two...
+1
+144
The pointer tracking also seemed a bit erratic to me compare to when I switched back to the default OS X trackpad pref pane.
Otherwise it's very cool and if the above-mentioned features were available I would most likely register.
Thanks,
Alex (SideTrack developer)
+24