This online touchpad test tracks what your browser actually receives from your trackpad: live cursor position, clicks, two-finger scroll in both directions, and pinch-to-zoom gestures. It also reads navigator.maxTouchPoints, the browser value that reports how many simultaneous touch points your hardware supports. Move your finger over the pad below and every signal updates in real time, which makes it easy to confirm a trackpad is tracking smoothly before you blame an app for feeling unresponsive.
A laptop trackpad does not send raw touch data to the browser the way a touchscreen does. The operating system driver translates finger movement into standard pointer and mouse events, and translates two-finger gestures into wheel events, so this test reads the same signals any web page can see: pointer position, button state, and wheel deltas. That is also why the pointer type reported below usually says mouse rather than touch, even though you are using a trackpad. It reflects how the input reaches the browser, not a fault in the test.
Two-finger scrolling on a trackpad fires wheel events with both a vertical delta and a horizontal delta, so this test tracks them separately, which is the easiest way to confirm your trackpad supports horizontal swipe scrolling and not just vertical. Pinch-to-zoom is trickier to detect consistently: Chrome and Edge report a trackpad pinch as a wheel event with the Ctrl key flag set, even though you never touched a keyboard, while Safari fires its own proprietary gesture events. This test listens for both patterns, so a pinch should register as a gesture in either browser family.
Everything is read directly from standard browser input events and nothing is sent anywhere; closing the tab discards all of it immediately. Because this test relies on what the operating system reports to the browser, results reflect your OS trackpad driver as much as the physical hardware. If a gesture works in your system settings panel but not here, or the other way around, that points to a difference between the driver and how the browser interprets its output rather than a hardware fault.
How to use the touchpad test
- Move your finger across the pad below and watch the position marker follow it.
- Click and, if your trackpad supports it, two-finger tap to test the right-click.
- Scroll with two fingers, in all four directions, to check the wheel deltas.
- Pinch in and out with two fingers to test for a detected zoom gesture.
- Check the max touch points value to see how many simultaneous touches your hardware reports.
Frequently asked questions
Why does the pointer type say mouse instead of touch?
Trackpads are translated into standard mouse and pointer events by the operating system driver before they reach the browser, so pointerType almost always reports mouse for a trackpad. Only a touchscreen you touch directly, not a trackpad, typically reports pointerType touch.
The pinch gesture is not detected. Is my trackpad broken?
Not necessarily. Pinch detection depends on your browser: Chrome and Edge report it through a wheel event with the Ctrl key flag, Safari uses its own gesture events, and some other browsers do not expose a pinch signal to web pages at all. Try the pinch in the operating system's own trackpad settings panel to confirm the gesture itself works before assuming a hardware fault.
What does max touch points mean?
It is the navigator.maxTouchPoints value your browser reports, which is the maximum number of simultaneous touch contacts your hardware and driver support. A value of 0 is normal for most laptop trackpads, since they report through mouse events rather than touch events; touchscreens typically report a higher number.
Why does horizontal scroll show zero?
Some trackpads and some operating system settings do not enable horizontal two-finger scrolling by default. Try swiping left and right rather than up and down, and check your system trackpad settings if the horizontal delta never moves.
More hardware tests
Keep checking your gear with the rest of the MyGearCheck suite: