Tap-to-click issue on MacOS 12.0.1

Hello,

I have been experiencing a very similar issue. The issue seems to be only with the 'tap to click' functionality on the trackpad. For every X amount of taps, one tap will be totally unresponsive. When you're working for longer periods of time you begin to feel it more and its really frustrating. I have contacted apple support- ran a first aid on the hard drive which made no difference. As a result I was told to install macOS Monterey fresh and that also made no difference at all. After speaking to someone more senior in the support team, I was told that this issue has now been raised to the software engineers and hopefully would expect to see a fix in the next incremental update. The MacBook I own is a MacBook Air 2020 M1.

Another issue I pointed out to apple is that the 'silent clicking' option in trackpad settings makes absolutely no difference to the artificial 'click' sounds when pressing down on the trackpad. I recall having a previous MacBook Air with a 10th gen intel chip which really did click silently when selecting this option. Strange.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,

Ali

Nice one. I have done likewise and a follow up call with the senior support team was scheduled for today but my 2017 MacBook Pro suffered intermittent screen failure when opening and closing so it is away for repairs - what are the chances! When it's back with a reliable image on screen I will connect with them again, though I think they will only tell me what they told you: wait for next update. I'm curious, did support capture data from your machine while you were using the trackpad to try and pin-point moments when these phantom clicks occurred? They did with me.

Hello,

I am sorry to hear about the screen failure on your MacBook Pro. I do hope it gets resolved very soon!

Regarding the trackpad issue, no such data was captured or requested. They only asked me to do the following:

1) Run the machine on safe mode- issue persisted

2) Run a first aid on the hard disk drive- issue persisted

3) Clean install of macOS Monterey- issue persisted

It was at that point that they asked me to wait for the next incremental update as its been raised to the software engineers. I really do hope the next update fixes this. If not, then my user experience on this machine is basically compromised and thats most unfair.

I hope this helps, and good luck with your MacBook!

Ali

Thanks. Same for you.

Those same steps were taken with me. Resetting SMC and NVRAM I did myself. Booting in safe mode as advised online with Apple. Creating a new user/administrator account and transferring across to that - deleting the old one. New Install etc. The issue persisted thus they decided to capture some data. Surprises me that the same was not done with you.

I think the problem has to do with conflicts involving remote access across devices - not a function that I personally use... but that's just a hunch. I don't know enough.

All I know for sure is that my user experience is also compromised, Ali. I'm trying to go back to hard clicking, just in case there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

I have a problem that the trackpad stops responding reliably when I use the pinch-to-zoom gesture. For example, to zoom into a workspace in Adobe XD. I use this gesture very often and it is very annoying that it no longer works.

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) 2,2 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7 | Mac OS 12.0.1 (21A559)

Marcus_4SELLERS wrote:

I have a problem that the trackpad stops responding reliably when I use the pinch-to-zoom gesture. For example, to zoom into a workspace in Adobe XD. I use this gesture very often and it is very annoying that it no longer works.

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) 2,2 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7 | Mac OS 12.0.1 (21A559)

I use two- and three- and four-finger gestures, as defined in System Preferences->Trackpad, and they all work.

Is this issue happening for you system-wide, or specifically in this Adobe application?

It is so that the gesture is often not recognized the first time and I have to perform the gesture several times with my fingers on the trackpad until the system reacts. This happens in all applications where I want to zoom (e.g. Preview, XD, Illustrator). I only noticed this since the update to Monterey.

Check any and all non-default settings. I saw a recent thread where some minor setting in Terminal completely changed the behaviour of all windows when Terminal was running. Someone else noticed a connection between these trackpad issues and the zoom setting in Accessibility, which I have always enabled. It will be a while before I can tell if there is any difference with zoom disabled. These bugs are fleeting and annoying. They don't happen until you are completely unprepared for them. Many people may not even realize they are happening.

LOL! That didn't take long. Drag the Xcode window to the external display. Click inside window. Another file gets opened and half the content selected and my mouse pointer is instantly back on the main display.

Sounds like you've thoroughly tried to get to the bottom of this issue, unfortunately to no avail. I understand the frustration and its bothering me quite a lot too. Some of these steps you've taken apply only to an intel based machine, as I understand certain troubleshooting steps work a little differently on apple silicon.

I have tried to get used to the hard clicking- but as I said in my initial post the 'silent clicking' function makes absolutely difference to the synthetic click noise coming out the speaker. it still sounds the same and I wish it was truly silent. I remember it being that way with my previous intel machine and it was so satisfying to use. Apple clearly have a lot modifications to make with their software for the trackpad.

Hopefully the next update sorts all these things out.

Best wishes,

Ali.

No settings were active in the Zoom settings in Accessibility. This is not the reason. I think it is a bug in Monterey. And a pretty bad one at that. This problem with the pinch-to-zoom gesture is a real productivity killer. I use this gesture extremely often in my daily UI and graphic design work. I have always argued to my management that I want to work with a Macbook instead of a Windows notebook because I am much more productive with it due to the better usabilty. This argument should still be valid and I hope that Apple will quickly remedy this.

Hi guys,

I'm very happy to hear, that I'm not alone with this problem. I just buyed last week the M1 macbook air (2020). With Monterey I'm experiencing the same problem, one finger tab is failing once in about 15-20 clicks. Two finger tap never fails. I even exchanged my brand new macbook, because of this problem, as I thought it was a trackpad issue. The replacement just arrived today and the problem still exists. So it can't be a hardware failure.

Apple please have a look at it.

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!

Really sorry to hear that. I did some further tinkering around, even re-enabling the Smart Zoom function and have not seen the issue return. That said, I have had the very occasional missed tap as well as one instance where the cursor jumped position. It is so rare ATM that it really isn't an issue at all. I'm not totally convinced that it couldn't happen again, however, so only time will tell.

I had actually done more customizing in the Trackpad settings, changing tracking speed, click pressure setting (to medium from light, but now back on light). I noticed the change after turning off Smart Zoom, however, so I feel it was something to do with that. I did several things though really, so kind of like a "jiggling the wires" sort of thing.

I had a similar experience. I messed around with some settings, closed some background apps like Dropbox, and then enabled tap to click again. It seemed to work fine, but the next day, with no more changes, I was missing clicks with a jumpy cursor again.

Maybe the erratic nature of this bug is why more people aren’t complaining about it. It’s easy to dismiss a missed click here and there as user error, even if the frustration is gradually getting worse.