When your fingers are already parked on the home row, reaching down to tap the trackpad interrupts typing flow. Apple includes a legacy keyboard modifier that dates back to the System 7 era of the 1990s: the Control-click shortcut.
Holding the Control (⌃) key while performing a standard left click tells macOS to intercept the signal and generate a secondary click instead. Do not confuse the Control key with the Command (⌘) key; clicking while holding Command selects disparate items or opens links in background windows. The Control key exclusively summons contextual menus across native and third-party software alike.
