Tap-to-click issue on MacOS 12.0.1

I resolved my issue on my M1 MB Air by selecting "Light" in the Trackpad "Point & Click" section.

It was driving me up the wall, I upgraded my work MB Air first, dealt with this issue and then upgraded my home MB Air M1, thinking I'd just deal with it until Apple figured it out.

Turns out it was just the setting in the aforementioned preference.

Potential Fix!

On my late 2015 27" iMac.

Disabling Smart Zoom (double tap with two fingers) in Trackpad settings and I'm now feeling like it's fixed. I did a restart of the machine also, so perhaps throw that in as well, though I cannot honestly remember if I changed my settings before or after the restart. I had been trying to get a few tasks done and was going crazy with the issue.

I had also reverted my cursor size and color at the same time in Accessibility settings, so possibly also important.

I really, really hope this works for everyone! And I'm so sorry if I've gotten your hopes up if it doesn't. I know the feeling. It seems to be working normally as it always did.

Also, an issue where after hitting Cmd-Cntrl-Q to lock the screen, and then hitting Esc to quickly put the screen to sleep wasn't working, i.e., hitting Esc after the screen was locked didn't do anything until several seconds after it was locked, also started behaving normally again. Now, hitting Esc after Cmd-Cntrl-Q immediately puts the screen to sleep.

I had felt that while the tap to click issue persisted that it was a conflict where the system just wasn't sure what it was supposed to do/had conflicting actions it thought it should take and just ignored the tap. It just had this weird feel to it. My cursor also jumped around quite often upon tapping, usually moving a few centimeters away from where it was.

Again, hope I'm not giving out false hope to anyone! Good luck!

Edit: Yes! Also fixed the very frustrating pinch to zoom issue, which is also very important for my work!

I FINALLY fixed it for ME. I went to System Preferences: Trackpad and changed it from Light to Medium. Then.....it worked as if it was still Light....which makes no sense....BUT it works! No more re-clicking ! I am tapping so light it's silly. I think by changing it, it wakes it up, so to speak. I hope this helps someone.

I had the same issue with my 14" MacBook Pro. I brought it to the Apple store to check, where the issue could even be reproduced on other Macs standing there. It occurs more often when holding control + tap (e.g. using finder).

Apple confirmed that there is a known issue with tap to click. They're still checking for the root cause, which may lie in some kind of "root system" (not the OS) in combination with the trackpad - they're hoping they will be able to resolve this via SW-bugfix.

Monterey 12.1 has fixed the problem for me.

Tapping 100 times here gives 100% registration (previously always 95 to 97 or so, never 100):

https://www.rapidtables.com/tools/click-counter.html

As it said in your article - "With Apple yet to acknowledge the issue, it seems highly unlikely the macOS 12 Monterey trackpad issue will be fixed soon. Unfortunately, we were also unable to find any workaround for the issue"

And it's not the only trouble with Monterey, how about Running Out of application memory on mac 14",M1Max,64GB ? I've ran into the same issue on my MBP 13 m1 today and yesterday, although i was using the same amount of applications as before

So, the problem isn't caused by "third party applications" (haha), it's just Monterey, and only one way to resolve all of the issues is downgrading to Big Sur

Suggest downloading the Application Etrecheck directly from a well Respected ASC Contributor. 

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Even the senior support guys seem to have no idea what's going on. This is not a hardware issue, it's software and related to Monterey. I don't know anyone who isn't complaining about tap to click, although I think the issue is not well spread because most people just use the click trackpad instead of tapping, so they're not having any problems. This is ridiculous, it's been three days since I've downgraded to BigSur and it feels like I bought a new machine: no tap to click issue whatsoever with my M1 MBA (even though I dislike BigSur and would probably stay on Catalina forever if it was possible on M1 MBAs, but since I sold my 2019 intel MBP I'm stuck with BigSur for the foreseeable future). I'm not upgrading to Monterey and will probably skip it now.

I enrolled in the public beta programme and downloaded 12.1 ahead of time... such was my frustration. I'm not a developer but I use my Mac under the gaze of dozens of people in adult education and it was becoming a real embarrassment. Now, tap-to-click is working as it used to - I mean 100% of taps registering. As of yet no issues with command clicking. But please bear in mind, downloading software that is not yet officially released brings with it some risks, so I'm told.

Update (12.1) is out people. It's supposed to be fixing this. Download... Fingers crossed.

Yes!! Monterey 12.1 has fixed the problem for me too! Sensitivity and tap to click now 100% works fine for me like before. Thx Apple. (Apple MacBook Air M1)

Did you update to 12.1?

It solved the problem for most people, though apparently not everyone.

You should't be changing any configuration. Trackpad was working absolutely perfectly before Monterey. Try upgrading to 12.2.

Rymaniola wrote:

Go to trackpad settings and make sure 'tap-to-click' is ticked, whether that be permanently or temporarily in order to perform the following experiment:

Open Keynote...

Add a table (10 x 10 squares)...

Change the fill colour of the first square...

Command-C the contents of the first cell... then, using the cursor to select the adjacent cell, paste the same fill in there....

Do likewise with all cells - always selecting them one by one using the cursor and a light tap (not your keyboard - other than Command-C/Command-V)...

When a tap fails to register use a different colour to fill that cell so it stands out and can be counted later...

You can then ascertain how many clicks fail to register out of the 100 total

Would be interested to hear back from as many as possible. A bit of hard data to throw Apple's way might help...

Thanks for posting that!

I got 91% the first try and 93% the second try.

The missing taps aren't even my biggest complaint. It is the taps that are invented, at some random place on the screen.

Wiped my hard drive and reinstalled Monterey as instructed and the problem still persists. Senior support at Apple proceed to tell me it must be hardware. This doesn't bode well for the next update. There seems to be a reluctance to accept that this is an issue. How can it be hardware if downgrading to Big Sur yields a 100% tap-to-click success rate. Does anyone know of anyone using tap-to-click on Monterey with 100% of taps registering? I tapped to select 1000 cells in tables within Keynote using my MacBook Air (2020) with Big Sur installed and my MacBook Pro (13", 2017) with Monterey installed - 100% success for the former, 95% for the latter. Zero problems before I upgraded to Monterey.