From the course: Working with Computers and Devices

Access system features with right-click

From the course: Working with Computers and Devices

Access system features with right-click

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- [Instructor] An essential part in learning to become proficient when it comes to using a computer is to learn the right click. The term right click refers to the button found on the right side of a mouse with two or more buttons. Generally, if you're right handed, you'll click the left button of the mouse the majority of the time with your right index finger. This is the mouse's main button that allows you to select items, double click things, and make selections. But both the operating system, and most applications you'll use have special shortcuts, and menus that will appear when you click items with the right mouse button. For example, left clicking this file on my desktop, lets me select it. But right clicking it opens up this menu. What do you see in right click menus sometimes called contextual menus depends on the item you're clicking. For this file I see options to open it, to share it, or to delete it. So if I choose delete, that sends it to the recycle bin. I can double click the recycle bin with my left mouse button to view its contents. And you can see I have three items in here. Now, as we learned earlier, items in the recycle bin can be moved back out in case you didn't mean to delete them. One way is to drag them back into the folder they came from. But you can also right click the files in the recycle bin. And those one of the options here is restore. Selecting that sends the file back to the folder it came from, which is much faster than opening both the folder, and the recycle bin and dragging the file from one to the other. Right click options are often designed to save time. For example, if you want to permanently delete the items in the recycle bin, you could open it up, click the recycle bin tools tab, and from here choose to empty the recycle bin. But another and faster way to do this, is to right click the recycle bin, and choose empty recycle bin. This way you don't even have to open up the recycle bin first, which can again save time if you're certainly you want to empty it before checking its contents. Here, I'll click yes. And now my recycle bin is empty. The point is that you should get in the habit of trying to right click items just to see what shortcuts software designers may have hidden. Oftentimes you'll find shortcuts to commands and actions that may otherwise involve navigating through several menus or dialog boxes. Now incidentally if you're left handed and need to switch the actions of the left and right mouse buttons, you can right click on the desktop and choose personalize. That takes you to the personalization area of your system settings. Click the home icon to go to the main settings window, and then click devices. And here I'll select mouse. You can switch between your left and right mouse buttons as your primary button. So if you're left handed, you'll set the right button as the main mouse button, and the left button then becomes the button for revealing special menus. Again, right-clicking items is an important concept to learn. Just take some time when working in various applications to right click a few things, and see what options may be available. More often than not you'll find and learn some great time-saving shortcuts.

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