Pinch zoom on MacBook Pro unreliable with macOS Monterey

I got this problem as well on my MacBook Pro M1Pro 16".

It occurs every now and then, and the effect is everywhere.

My solution is to get in to the force quit window and restart Finder.

However, this needs to be addressed by Apple now, the problem is obviously not new.

Having the same issue on MacBook Pro 2019 (macOS 12.3.1). Pinch to Zoom stops responding and only helps to turn it on and off in Trackpad Settings.

fkadb wrote:

Only pinch zoom is affected; other single and multi finger trackpad gestures work fine.

...

Is this a known bug? Is there a workaround?

Then it sounds like you are doing a lot better than many other people. I would love it if only the pinch gesture was flaky and unreliable.

So yes, this is known bug, at least to other users. I know of no workaround. Please run Feedback Assistant and file a bug report.

Interesting, it did work for me on a 16" MacBook Pro M1 Pro under Monterey 12.0.1.

There is another option suggested in this thread https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253320997?answerId=256313638022#256313638022

It requires the user to Log Out and then In again. It's annoying and found the Quit Dock a more bearable solution though.

Hey Stanwik,

Not sure if you have tried this, but I have the same issue and this workaround worked for me:

Open "Activity Monitor" > Look for a process named "Dock" > Select it > Then click on the "Stop" icon at the top > Then "Quit" or "Force Quit" > The dock will then restart itself in a second and the trackpad should register gestures. Also, if the problem is constant, I would add the "Activity Monitor" app as a shortcut to the dock for easy reach.

Hopefully, this helps.

Hi fkadb,

Just stumbled upon this as I'm facing the same- as of this post, we're in April, 2022. I have still not able to find a workaround this. What I use as a hard fix (to get the job done) is "command + (minus)" to zoom out and "command + (plus key)" to zoom in.

Let me know if you've found a permanent fix! (And hope the above fix helps as a fool-proof way!

Before trying anything else, simply lick/wet your fingers then dab off any excess moisture. Now try zooming. For some reason, dry fingertips seem to affect the pinch-to-zoom feature adversely even when other gestures (two fingers to move/scroll the document, etc.) are working fine.

I have this exact problem on 2021 macbook pro max 16 inch. I mainly work with design softwares and I depend on zooming in an out. My fix so far has been to go into system preferences and turn off/on the pinch to zoom feature. That fixes the issue immediately but then it comes back.

Also when I was cleaning the screen I noticed that the gasket around the screen traps dust and if you run your finger on the gasket around the screen, you'd feel some bumps as if it hasn't been set right. Maybe just my machine has this issue.

This feels like the butterfly keyboard situation where they drag their feet to acknowledge the issues.

Just made a discovery by happenstance: It appears that the pinch/expand may be working, but just NOT on the active/foreground window.

I had been working in Affinity Photo, and then toggled to different windows/programs. I had opened an image in Finder and was frustrated to find pinch/expand not working, but then noticed in an edge of the Affinity window in the background that *that* program was still responding to my Trackpad pinches, even though it was about 3 windows removed from the active foreground.

Hello, fkadb.

I have the exact same issue. I'm on MBP 14-inch with M1 Pro, running Monterey (12.1).

I just wanted to add that for me, this seems to happen when I have two windows of the same application open.

For example, if I open <file 01>.xlsx and <file 02>.xlsx at the same time in MS Excel, pinch to zoom will work fine on one of these two windows, but it will not work on the other one. Also, when I open some kind of map website on Google Chrome, and open another window of Chrome and go to that exact same website, only one of the two websites will allow me to pinch-zoom the map. But, even this glitch happens like 50% of the time, not always.

I also think that this is a problem of new Mac OS, and I really hope that Apple deals with this issue.

The second step you should try is to ensure that your Mac is up to date. On your Mac, go to System Preferences > Software Update. Update your Mac by following the on-screen instructions, if there is an update available. You may also want to turn on automatic macOS updates by checking the “automatically keep my Mac up to date” box.

Nice work, Fkadb.

If you're able to reproduce the issue on two separate Macs in both safe mode and a test user, then we'd recommend to connect with Apple on this directly: Get Support

They'll take it from here.

Wishing you well, cheers.

I have had the very same issue -- pinch in/out not working consistently on my MacBook Pro trackpad -- that started exactly concurrent with upgrading my MacOS from Catalina to Monterey. It is clearly a software glitch and needs to be fixed. I use the trackpad all the time for graphics applications, but my employer will not allow me to revert to a pre-Monterey OS because of security update issues.

I've been having this problem. Sometimes, I pinch to zoom and it doesn't respond until I repeat the gesture a few times. Then it's responsive as usual. Recently, I had pinch-to-zoom simply stop working for about 5 minutes. Then suddenly it began working again!

I am running Better Touch Tool (since Apple still hasn't introduced decent window snapping to OS X). That could be the culprit? I will try disabling it for a while and see if changes anything.