How do I turn off the cursor hover function on my Mac?

JeanneFL5 wrote:

When the cursor is over a link or function, it opens the link or performs the function, whether I like it or not. I don’t know why anybody would want that. It could get a person in trouble.

First, I went to >System Preferences>Trackpad but couldn’t find anything that fit. So I started googling. When I found this old post, I thought I had my answer. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3961863 But I guess it was out of date. It didn't help because I couldn't find the "Ignore accidental trackpad input" box.

It almost sounds like your computer is thinking you "clicked" on something (e.g. a link) when you did not intend for that to happen. Under System Preferences => Trackpad under the Point and Click button there is box next to "Tap to Click" which I myself UNCHECKED because I was having the same problem you described -- my computer was acting like I had clicked on links or clicked to open files or programs when that was not what I had intended! I think my innocent touching the trackpad was interpreted by my laptop as a real "click." Anyway, I hope this helps you like it did for me.

There is another thing there you can adjust which is under CLICK is has a slider from "light" to "medium" to "firm." "Light" means a light touch is interpreted as a click (I think), so you might try "firm" and see if that helps.

JeanneFL5 wrote:

How do I turn off the cursor hover function? I recently had a new hard drive installed and upgraded to Catalina. I use the trackpad.

What is "cursor hover function" ?

Have you made any adjustment to make the trackpad work for you better?

>System Preferences>Trackpad

How to use the Force Touch trackpad - Apple Support

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204352

Use Multi-Touch gestures on your Mac - Apple Support

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204895

Change Mouse & Trackpad preferences for accessibility on Mac

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-mouse-trackpad-preferences-unac899/mac

Change how your trackpad works with Mac - Apple Support

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-the-way-your-trackpad-works-mchlp1226/mac

Turn on "three finger drag" for your Force Touch trackpad - Apple Support

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204609

"Dwell" is an Accessibility feature built into macOS.

It sounds to me like you've inadvertently activated the Accessibility feature by pressing Option-Command-F5. You can press that key combination again to toggle the feature off.

You can check System Preferences > Accessibility. Scroll the sidebar down to Keyboard, then look at Accessibility Keyboard tab and see if it has been enabled (check marked). While you're there, click the Options… button and the Dwell tab after.

You can disable the Accessibility feature by navigating to System Preferences > Accessibility and scrolling the sidebar down to Shortcut. There you will find check boxes to disable certain features.

Please also see this support doc for more info:

Set Accessibility preferences on Mac - Apple Support