How to Completely Disable the ‘Look Up’ Dictionary Pop-up on Force Touch in macOS

Modern MacBooks and Magic Trackpads feature a technology called “Force Touch,” which allows the trackpad to detect how hard you are pressing down on the glass. By default, macOS assigns a specific action to a hard press (a Force Click): it instantly opens a small dictionary “Look Up” bubble. If you Force Click on a word in an email, a webpage, or a document, a yellow bubble appears providing the definition, Wikipedia summary, or translation of that word.

While this is incredibly useful for students reading dense academic texts, it can be a nightmare for fast typists or gamers. If you have a heavy hand, you will likely trigger this dictionary bubble constantly by accident when you are just trying to select text or drag a window. This immediately interrupts your workflow and forces you to click away to dismiss the bubble. Fortunately, you can disable this specific gesture.

Disabling the Look Up Gesture in System Settings

You can turn off the dictionary pop-up without disabling the Force Touch hardware entirely, allowing you to still use hard presses for other functions (like fast-forwarding in QuickTime).

1. Click the Apple Logo in the absolute top-left corner of your Mac’s screen.
2. Select System Settings… from the dropdown menu (or “System Preferences” if you are running an older version of macOS).
3. Scroll down the left-hand sidebar and click on Trackpad (it is usually located near the bottom, grouped with Keyboard and Mouse).
4. In the main Trackpad panel, ensure you are on the Point & Click tab at the top.
5. Look for the setting labelled Look up & data detectors.
6. Next to this setting, you will see a dropdown menu that is likely set to “Force Click with one finger.”
7. Click the dropdown menu and change it to Off.

The change is instantaneous. You can test it immediately by opening a webpage and pressing down hard on any word. The dictionary bubble will no longer appear.

Alternative: Keep the Feature but Change the Trigger

If you actually like the dictionary feature but just hate triggering it accidentally with a heavy click, you do not have to turn it off completely. You can simply change the physical gesture required to activate it.

In that same Trackpad settings menu, instead of selecting “Off,” select Tap with three fingers. This changes the trigger from a hard physical press to a light, three-finger tap. Because a three-finger tap is a very deliberate action, it is almost impossible to trigger by accident while typing or dragging, giving you the best of both worlds.