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iLife Tip: Enable Multi-Touch maps in iPhoto '09

by Cory Bohon Jan 28th 2009 at 6:00PM

After using iPhoto '09 for a couple days, I have come to love the new features, in particular the Places feature. However, one thing that annoyed me is that you cannot use the Multi-Touch feature on newer MacBooks to manipulate the maps (zooming in/out, etc.).

However, thanks to a Tweet-tip from Steven Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith), there is a way to enable this functionality. To add Multi-Touch maps to places in iPhoto '09, just open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities) and type (or copy/paste) the following statement and press enter:

defaults write com.apple.iphoto MapScrollWheel -bool YES

When you restart iPhoto, you will notice that you are now able to scroll in/out of the Places maps with ease. If it turns out that you don't want the scrolling feature, just retype the statement, replacing "YES" with "NO."


Thanks for the tip, Steven!

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After using iPhoto '09 for a couple days, I have come to love the new features, in particular the Places feature. However, one thing that...
 

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James Loper

thats two finger scrolling. its been on apple laptops since the iBook G4. multitouch means pinch/zoom gestures and this isnt that

January 28 2009 at 11:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Stephen.4

How do people find out these hidden settings in Apple products?

January 28 2009 at 9:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Stephen.4's comment
Tommy

By looking in the preference files, like the one in this post: com.apple.iphoto. There is an option called MapScrollWheel, which is set to NO by default. The terminal command is just an easy and safe way to change it to yes without accidently altering other settings.

A lot of application have preferences that are not visible in the GUI.

January 29 2009 at 8:35 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Paul Mison

You can also run strings on the binary app. There's an awful lot to read through, but you can find things if you're persistent. It's how I found the way to suppress the genre browser in iTunes 8, anyway.

January 30 2009 at 6:11 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tommy

This also works if you just want to enable scroll-wheel zooming, if you haven't got fancy multi touch macbooks.

January 28 2009 at 7:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joey Bobby

This doesn't work; running 10.5.6, iPhoto 09. Terminal logged in without root access.

January 28 2009 at 6:55 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Joey Bobby's comment
loup407

Same here....:-(

January 28 2009 at 6:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Steve

The command works fine, except the description given by TUAW sucks - it doesn't enable actual multitouch (aka pinch zooming) but it enables the two-finger scrolling to zoom (and scroll wheels too).

January 28 2009 at 7:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dorin Paslaru

I've just added it to Secrets http://secrets.blacktree.com/. Please check it out if it works properly. Here is the URL: http://secrets.blacktree.com/edit?id=7561 You can edit it for 3 day's.
Thanks

January 28 2009 at 6:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Raj Yar

Thanks!

Www.twitter.com/teencast

January 28 2009 at 6:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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