In this article, we’re going to go over how to move in Blender on a laptop, without a mouse. I’ll show you 3 different ways, each with their own set of pros and cons. That way you can decide for yourself, which method is right for you.
Now, using a mouse is a much better way to navigate around in Blender. It doesn’t matter if it’s corded or wireless, just make sure it has a scroll wheel!
But, if you don’t have a mouse, or you don’t want one, then you’re in the right place!
How To Move in Blender on a Laptop – Table of Contents
Walk Mode
The first way, and probably the best in my opinion, is “Walk Mode”. This is also known as the “WASD Mode”, and for good reason. If you’ve ever played a first-person game, like Minecraft, then this navigation method is going to be very familiar to you.
But before we can try out this function, first we need to make sure that we are in “Walk”, and not “Fly” mode. So let’s go to Edit > Preferences > Navigation and in the “Fly and Walk” section, make sure “Walk” is selected.
If you want to experiment and have some fun with “Fly”, you can. I thought it was kind of weird and it reminded me of sliding around on ice haha. However, for actually moving around your scene, I would leave it on “Walk”.
There is also a “Gravity” checkbox in this area, but again, I don’t suggest enabling it. For this to be useful, you kind of need a scene with a “floor”, or some sort of ground to walk on. If this is turned on, you’re just going to infinite fall unless you have something to catch you. Just left click to stop yourself from falling if you do try it. You’re welcome. 😉
We can close out of that Preferences window now and go back into the main screen of Blender. By the way, you don’t have to open up Preferences every time you want to use Walk Mode. Just make sure it’s on the mode you want for this first time and you should be good to go from then on.
How To Turn On Walk Mode
To activate Walk Mode, just press Shift Tilde(~) on your keyboard.
- W – Move forward
- A – Move left
- S – Move backwards
- D – Move right
- Q – Move down
- E – Move up
- Hold Shift – Move faster when paired with the above keys
Once you’ve made it to your destination in your 3D Viewport, left click to let Blender know you’re done moving around. You can also hit ESC on your keyboard to cancel the movement you’ve done.
Walk Mode – Pros And Cons
The Pro of this method, I think, is how easy it is to move around. This is a really big deal because you do A LOT of moving around in Blender. Also, if you’re a gamer, you’re going to feel right at home here.
The Con is that it’s kind of annoying to have to activate and confirm every time you want to move. I don’t really think it’s a deal breaker with this one, though.
Navigation Gizmo
The next method we’re going to learn about for moving around in Blender on a laptop is how to use the “Navigation Gizmo”.
If you are brand new to Blender, you may not know what the red and green lines in the 3D Viewport are. These are called “axes” (plural for axis), and the red line is called the “x axis” and the green line is called the “y axis”. These basically represent the front and back, left and right space in your scene.
If you look on the Navigation Gizmo in the upper right of the Viewport, you’ll see that we have a red “x” circle and a green “y” circle. These represent the x and y axes that we just learned about.
There is also a blue “z” circle here, and it represents the “z axis” or the “zed axis” as some people call it. This is the vertical, or up and down space in your scene.
How To Use The Navigation Gizmo
In order to navigate using the Gizmo, simply left click and drag anywhere in the circle. This will rotate your view, like you’re looking around your scene. (You may have noticed that when you hover over the “x”, “y”, or “z” letters, that they become highlighted. More on that in a moment.)
If you want to zoom in or out, just click and drag up or down on the “magnifying glass” icon.
Likewise, if you want to “pan”, or move left, right, up, or down, click and drag the “hand” icon.
View Snapping
Now, coming back to the highlighted letters in the Gizmo.
If you click on the red circle with an “x” in it, it will snap you into “right facing mode”, or more technically “right orthographic view”. If you click on the green “y”, you will be snapped to the back view. The blue “z” will snap you to top view.
You can get the opposite view by clicking twice on a letter. So for example if you want front view, just click on the green “y” twice (not sure why it’s not front view by default 😅).
This is really handy when you need a locked in view of a particular side. You can actually achieve this same result a lot faster if you have a numpad on your keyboard. I know a lot of laptops don’t have this, but more on that in the “Emulate Numpad” section of this post.
You can, however, just use the keyboard shortcut Tilde(~) to open up a “pie menu” with all the same locked in views we just talked about. This is really nice since you can do this whether you have a numpad or not. Depending on your comfort level of keyboard shortcuts, this is a much faster way than clicking the letters in the Gizmo. It’s perfect if you’re just wanting some quick blender laptop controls!
Navigation Gizmo – Pros and Cons
The Pro of the Navigation Gizmo I think is that if you need a very specific, locked in view of a certain side, this is a very good method to use. Especially if you’re using the Tilde(~) keyboard shortcut.
The Con of this method is definitely how slow it is. If you have any size to your scene, you’re going to spend forever trying to navigate around.
Emulate 3 Button Mouse
This next method works best if you already have a two button mouse, like an Apple Magic Mouse for Mac, but just don’t have a scroll wheel. Otherwise, if all you have is a trackpad, I personally thought this method was the worst.
The way you turn on “Emulate 3 Button Mouse” is by going to Edit > Preferences > Input, and in the “Mouse” section, click “Enable 3 Button Mouse”.
There is also a box in this section that lets you choose whether you want to use “Alt” for Windows/Linux or “OS Key” (⌘) for Mac. The key that you select here will be the “signal key” to let Blender know you’re ready to move.
Once you have everything checked and selected, you can close out of the Preferences window.
Now, with Emulate 3 Button Mouse enabled, you can press and hold Alt (for Windows/Linux) or OS Key (⌘ for Mac) and left click and drag to rotate your 3D view.
To pan around (move up, down, left, right) press and hold Alt or ⌘ with Shift while you left click and drag.
To zoom in and out, press and hold Alt or ⌘ with ctrl/control while you left click and drag.
Emulate 3 Button Mouse – Pros and Cons
The Pro of this one is that if you have a two button mouse (no scroll wheel), this way isn’t too bad. In fact, this would probably be the method I would use in that situation. It is a little annoying to have to hold all those buttons while you move, but I think you could very easily get used to it.
The Con is that if all you have is a trackpad, this way feels awful. Having to hold all those button combinations while also holding down left click and dragging on a trackpad just feels terrible to me.
Final Verdict
So there you have it. In my opinion, if you’re using Blender with a trackpad, the best way to move around is to use Walk, or WASD mode. I think it will be the most familiar to gamers, and the cons are pretty minimal as well.
If you do have a mouse, but there’s no scroll wheel, I prefer the “Emulate 3 Button Mouse” mode. That’s because it still lets you take advantage of using a mouse, which is really helpful, but with the small con (small at least in this situation) of having to press a few keys on your keyboard.
But before you go! I have one last little “Bonus Tip” for you! This is something a lot of people suggest doing if you’re on a laptop, but we’ll see why I suggest against it.
Bonus Tip – Emulate Numpad
This last little bonus tip is something that a lot people suggest you do if you have a small keyboard. They suggest that you “emulate the numpad”.
Now, the numpad is that little section of numbers and keys on the right side of full sized keyboard. It has keys like 0-9, decimal point, plus, minus, etc. and each of these keys on the numpad have specific keyboard shortcuts assigned to them. Most of them have to do with camera angles.
For example: if you press “1” on your numpad, it will snap you into front view (just like clicking on the green “y” circle in the Navigation Gizmo).
I won’t go through all the keys, but that should give you an idea of the types of camera angles I’m talking about.
How To Turn On Emulate Numpad in Blender
If you want to enable this feature, go up to Edit > Preferences > Input, and in the “Keyboard” section, enable “Emulate Numpad”.
However, I personally don’t like this feature because it overwrites some very useful default keyboard shortcuts. For example:
Let’s start up a new Blender file and go into Edit mode by pressing TAB. You should see that the default cube has orange dots on all of its corners. This is because we are in “Vertex Select” mode by default. Each of those orange dots are called vertices. In Vertex Select mode, we can select and edit vertices.
To enter into “Vertex Select” mode, the keyboard shortcut is “1” on the top row of your keyboard.
If you press “2”, you will change to “Edge Select” mode, where you can move and edit edges. Likewise, if you press “3”, you will be in “Face Select” mode, allowing you to manipulate the “faces” of your model.
Why I Don’t Like Emulate Numpad
These selection modes are super helpful. They also save you a ton of time switching back and forth between selection types as you’re modeling. If you enable Emulate Numpad, you will overwrite these really helpful, and extremely efficient keyboard shortcuts.
Personally, I would rather just leave my keyboard alone and take advantage of the Selection Mode keyboard shortcuts. Then I could either use the Navigation Gizmo to snap to a specific view if I needed it, or use the Tilde(~) key to open up the pie menu with all the same views like we saw earlier.
Conclusion
Alright, I hope that helps! If you’ve been wondering how to move in Blender on a laptop without a mouse, I will say it again. Actually having a mouse is so much better of an experience. However, if you’re not going to use a mouse, this post should really help you weigh out your options.
Thanks for reading along, and I’ll see you in the next post!