Tap-to-click issue on MacOS 12.0.1

I have the same issue on an M1 Pro 16" with Monterey 12.0.1 and it is extremely annoying. It is enough to take it in for a refund. I think it has to do with the internal polling rate of the trackpad which is too low. Needs to be at least 250hz. If I had to guess it is 60.

Glad to hear Apple is aware of the issue!! Fingers crossed for 12.0.2 very soon. It's most definitely Monterey related. Clean install made no difference.

As I've relied on tap-to-click since its introduction, it's especially jarring to not get any response. I tap, need to wait and see if it did get the tap, and if not, tap again (or sometimes a third time). It severely downgrades the Mac experience (as it would on any OS, TBH).

I don't like using taptic-click both for the extra physical effort it requires and the fact that it's quieter. I can go for hours using only the trackpad for input. I like quiet.

Seems no tinkering with smart zoom settings or resetting of SMC is going to help with this. Certainly didn't change anything on my device. For the foreseeable - because it's really damped things for me - I've opted to use an inferior computer with just the latest version of Big Sur installed.

I wonder if people might be so kind as to do the following and publish their numbers on here:

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...

Perhaps also when responding with results it would be informative to say whether you are finding daily usage of tap to click acceptable or not.

I've yet to perform the test, but I suppose that I might get similar results to the posted 93 and 94 percent, and currently I'm not finding the performance horrendous as I did before things improved for me. I'll report back in a bit when I've done the test.

Completely unacceptable. When you buy something that has a function you rely on, you expect it to work 100% of the time. You shouldn't have to change the way you use it because the developers broke it. It's like buying a car without the rear view mirror. You can still turn your head around and it will work for 93% of the situations you need it, but the 7% would probably result in an accident.

IMO the percentages we are getting for testing this the way the guy suggested above just shows us how inaccurate tap to click is right now. It should work 100% of the time. Even if it was 99%, it would still be broken and need fixing.

I don't disagree. 7% miss rate is not okay. But, for me, it was almost definitely more like around 20%, probably more, at its worst.

With my test, I got 94%.

I don't find this a huge problem. I can get my work done without too much stress. Previously, I was just wondering when I was going to have enough time on my hands to download Big Sur, create a boot disk and install. It was nightmarish almost.

I mean it could be like this percentage with keynote. I definitely get a higher percentage when I'm browsing the web, be it on safari or firefox. I found myself having to move the cursor back to the link I clicked on very often due to this issue.

Trust me, I know what you are talking about. It was the same for me. For whatever reason, mucking around in the trackpad settings etc. gave me a pretty dramatic improvement. I hope you find some combination that works for you.

Edit: I should add, I have a MBP 2019 that is still on Big Sur and I am not about to update to Monterey. I'm far from confident enough to put that on my machine that currently does my video editing! That would be a potential disaster!

You’re absolutely right, I completely agree. The fact that this official software release has mucked up the user experience should hold apple completely liable. If this issue continues with the next software update I’ll demand either my money back (unlikely to happen) or a replacement of the machine. We shouldn’t have to settle with anything other than a perfectly functioning trackpad before they messed it up. I’m not enjoying the haptic feedback clicks as they seem like too much effort. I’m still using tap to click and taking in the frustration of having a few taps completely fail.

Apple- bring the next fix in quickly!

Yeah you should wait a few more months. The only reason I'm still on Monterey is because I'm too lazy to downgrade lol so I turned off tap to click and I'm not gonna lie, clicking the trackpad is pretty good (better than I expected tbh) so I might just leave it turned off until they fix it

Yes I thought about asking for a replacement or something, but I have an M1 MBA so, even though it's in the 1 year apple care, they would probably not do anything since I could just downgrade to BigSur. If you have one of the new MBP though, I think you could consider doing something about it since you can't have BigSur on it and god knows how long it will take to apple to fix this.

My machine is also the M1 MacBook Air like yours. I agree the unanimous (albeit embarrassing) workaround would be to downgrade operating systems, but I’m sure even they would consider that a massive compromise for a costumer to experience basic necessary hardware functionalities. I think I’ll try my best to tolerate it till the next fix comes, as I’m adjusting and learning the other features of Monterey and I wouldn’t want to miss out. I’ve adjusted the click settings to ‘light’ to keep it as quiet as possible lol, although I still much prefer tapping the trackpad.

Thanks for the advice, it’s really reassuring that there’s quite a number of people voicing their concerns on here- hopefully this might accelerate matters.

Best wishes,

Ali.

Hey guys, today I handed over my laptop for repair (about other problem, with the screen) but i told about tap-to-click issue as well. They said that they know about it, and many people come with this issue but on hardware level everything is fine and they can do nothing. They send diagnostic data to apple but haven't received answer from apple yet

If I do the test on my Mac running Big Sur 11.6.1 then I score 100% as well - no phantom clicks.

With Monterey - 6% failure, and that's if I'm lucky...

A very different experience indeed.

The novelty of the improvements in Monterey appeased me somewhat initially but it's like driving a Rolls-Royce on a road littered with a plethora of potholes.

Ran 6 test tables (separate slides). Three tables filled the slide (rectangular cells); the last three were square. Thought I'd change up the distance between targets.

Results: 98%, 97%, 97%, 98%, 95%, 96%

(plus one tap dropped when selecting slides)

This looks to be in line with the other lucky contestant's results.

Although not a big sample, offhand, it looks like the smaller, closer together square targets fared worse than the more spread out tables. Could be a timing thing exacerbating the bug – with the closer together square cells, I was able to select and paste at a faster rate.

Excellent suggestion, btw!

Just for giggles, and a sanity check, I'm going to reboot on Big Sur and/or Mojave (I skipped Catalina) and perform the test. Will post back.

Oh, and I find the bug to have a significant effect on my daily usage. I've been using tap-to-click since its introduction long ago. It's second nature, and it's not nice to fool nature...