Eli5 Why do you have to double click on desktop, but single click on the internet

Question

This is very fitting for this as I was probably about 5 when I first asked but never got a good answer “it’s just how it is” or something similar.
But when your on the desktop of your computer you double click to open a file or a program, but on the internet you single click everything.

In: 1

Answer 1

Because when it comes to files, sometimes you don’t want to open them but you want to highlight them instead so you can use keyboard commands like CTRL + C (to copy) or SHIFT and then one-click multiple files to highlight them.

If you want to highlight texts or links, you can drag your cursor over it (unlike files, which ends up getting moved along with the cursor).