Pinch zoom on MacBook Pro unreliable with macOS Monterey

Hello fkadb,

I hope that I can help you and anyone else out that is having this problem including Apple. I wanted to let you know that you aren't the only one experiencing this issue. I 100% have been experiencing this as well. This is almost certainly due to the new MacOS. I have a MacBook Pro (16' Intel 2019). It responds the same way (meaning its tracking about half the time when pinching to zoom). This happened after updating to Monterey. A fresh install did not fix this problem, nor will safe mode unfortunately.

As far as a fix I believe this needs to be looked over by the developer team. This seems weird but I notice after asking a few of my friends to try it out - some of them had more success zooming in first try than others. The issue seems to arise from size and / or shape of the inputs on the trackpad - meaning the size of your fingers and what part is touching the trackpad (believe it or not).

Makeshift Fix

I have found a work around. However, my fix is less than ideal. Use both your hands (I use my both my index fingers) and spread them apart at the same time like your normally should be able to do with one hand. You will run into hiccups doing this but it almost always works with having fewer instances were it doesn't read the input of your fingers.

I hope this helps you out a little, and I hope an actual fix comes

Jack

Hi Everyone,

I also have been plagued with this... the trackpad on my 13" M1 Macbook Pro (OS X 12.3.1 Monterey) randomly stops recognising my pinches. Sometimes gesture recognition comes back after a few minutes... It may/may not be useful but it seems to happen to me more often when I'm working between multiple applications (clicking back and forth between windows) where I'm doing a lot of pinching to zoom (Miro, MS PowerPoint, Adobe CC Illustrator, InDesign).

I too have found a makeshift fix...

When it happens to me, I open system preferences and toggle the gesture 'Zoom in or out' off and on again within the Trackpad > Scroll & Zoom preferences pane. Seems to rectify it every time the issue occurs, without fail.

Hope this helps others too! It's still insanely annoying when it occurs, particularly mid gesture.

I just started having this problem on both M1 13" 2020 and Intel i5 2019 after some Monterey update. Pinch to zoom in / out stops working.

Solution: System Preferences > Trackpad > Scroll & Zoom > Zoom in or out uncheck and check again.

Seems like I have to do this like 1-2 times an hour when working with documents (e.g. Pixelmator, Preview or Microsoft Word).

This may be the same bug affecting the Magic Trackpad and Mouse gestures in general under Mac OS Monterey. I found a fix on a separate thread for this bug that appears to be around since Monterey was released and Apple have not fixed it even on 12.0.1.

The Fix: Open Activity Monitor > Look for "Dock" under processes > Quit it or Force Quit.

This seemed to fix the non-responsive gestures.

Apple Please Kill This Bug

I get this issue too, on 12.3. Easiest workaround is to go to System Prefs > Trackpad > Scroll & Zoom tab and uncheck and then re-check the Zoom in and out option. That seems to reset the trackpad's behaviour.

I'm pretty sure this is a software bug. It happened on my old 13' inch 2013 MacBook every once in a while while using Sketch. Now it's happened a couple of times on my new 16' inch MacBook Pro M1 Pro. I thought the app was the problem, but it seems from this forum it's bigger than that.

Quick Fix:

1. Open System Preferences
2. Click Trackpad
3. Click the Scroll & Zoom Tab
4. Turn off Zoom in or out
5. Close System Preferences
6. Repeat steps 1 - 3 and turn Zoom in or out back on.

It should start working again

I have this issue too, and I think Apple should have a look at it.

I did found a solution that works for me.

Its going into system preferences>trackpad and then disabling and re-enabling the pinch to zoom.

if you to "systems preference" & then "trackpad" & then "scroll & zoom," you have to click on "zoom in or out" to unselect & then reclick to reselect. it will work for a while until it doesn't & you have to do it again. it happens to me when i open a new window in chrome.

My solution, using a Shortcut that runs an applescript to uncheck and recheck the Pinch to Zoom box: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/446348/336212

Hello Fkadb,

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities. Based on your post, the zoom gesture isn't working on your Mac's trackpad or external trackpad. We'll do our best to assist with this.

Have you had a chance to test this in safe mode yet? If not, we'd test it out there: How to use safe mode on your Mac

Use sections, 'If the issue continues in safe mode' and 'If the issue doesn't continue in safe mode', depending on the results there.

Booting to safe mode would tell us if there may be extensions causing issues after start up.

If that doesn't solve it, you can test it in another user to see if it's user specific: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac

Let us know how it goes.

Hoping to hear back, take care.

I have had the same issue with my MacBook Pro 14.

The workaround I've found is to disable the zoom function in the trackpad settings and enabling it again. After that it usually works fine for a while.

2022 and I'm still having this problem as well. Disappointing. I have a 2021, 14", M1 Max MacBook Pro, and my OS is up to date. jackIsCracked's workaround did not work for me. What I've found to work is to toggle "Tap to click" under Trackpad in the System Preferences (Lord only knows why). Hope a fix is to come.

Hello,

I read this thread searching for an answer, none of it really worked for me. I use Sketch where pinch to zoom is vital. To dodge the problem I started to zoom in/out and it started to work again. Next time when the problem occurred again, I intetionally zoomed in/out (like 3 times in and 3 times out times three) and pinch to zoom works every time after this. Cant confirm if it works with safari or other apps. It is important that you use the keyboard shortcut to zoom in/out couple of times.

Hope it helps.

I can't believe this issue is still going on. My pinch-to-zoom and other gestures, break basically every 3rd application switch. It's absolutely maddening. The only way to fix it is to power cycle my Magic Trackpad 2. It's f*****g insane this shipped.

thanks for this. it's been happening to me for a while, no help from apple. it occurs when i open a new window in chrome. i have to go to preferences, track pad, uncheck the box & then recheck it. very annoying. i can't believe apple can't fix this.