What is Force Touch?

Force Touch is a pressure-sensitive technology built into Apple's MacBook trackpads. Unlike a standard click, Force Touch distinguishes between a light press and a firm "deep press", enabling context-sensitive actions such as previewing a link, looking up a word, or triggering secondary actions in supported apps. The trackpad contains sensors that measure the physical force applied, reporting a continuous value from 0 (no contact) to 1 (maximum pressure).

Support varies by hardware and browser. Force Touch is available on MacBook models released from 2015 onward and is exposed to web pages through the Pointer Events / webkitmouseforcechanged API in Safari and Chromium-based browsers on macOS.

Tool description

Press and hold your MacBook trackpad anywhere on the detection zone to see real-time pressure feedback. A color-coded progress bar rises from 0 % to 100 % as you push harder, and a status indicator tells you whether you are in a light press or a deep press. The tool is useful for verifying that Force Touch is functioning correctly and for getting a feel for the pressure thresholds on your device.

Features

  • Real-time pressure bar — updates continuously as you vary force, with color shifting from green → yellow → red as pressure increases
  • Deep press detection — the bar animates and turns red when a Force Touch deep-press event is detected
  • Unsupported device notice — if your device or browser does not support pressure events, a warning is displayed immediately

How it works

The tool uses library, which abstracts over the webkitmouseforcechanged event (Safari/macOS) and the Pointer Events pressure property. When you press the trackpad, the library fires a change callback with a normalized force value between 0 and 1, which is multiplied by 100 and rendered as a percentage in the progress bar.

Limitations

  • Only works on MacBook trackpads with Force Touch hardware (2015 or later)
  • Requires Safari based browser on macOS; Firefox does not expose pressure APIs
  • Touch screens and ordinary mice do not report pressure and will trigger the "unsupported" notice