Disabling Desktop Icon Zoom w/ Trackpad?

Question

Level 1

30 points

Disabling Desktop Icon Zoom w/ Trackpad?

Does anyone know ofa way to disable to resizing of icons via a pinch gesture on a trackpad? Is 10.5, there was an option to disable this behavior, but I can't find it in 10.6 without disabling the pinch gesture everywhere. I am finding that I occasionally have my thumb touch the trackpad while moving the cursor around, and that ends up resizing my desktop icons. I place certain things on my desktop in specific locations, and this behavior generally trashes that.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Aug 9, 2010 9:55 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Oct 26, 2010 6:44 AM in response to Tom Ropers

Looking for the same thing. Are you using the BetterTouchTool? Click on the browser and select cmd J to reset them. I think the zoom may be related to the BetterTouchTool. I'll keep checking.

Message was edited by: josephrobinson

Reply

Answer 2

captfred

Level 7

26,422 points

Oct 26, 2010 7:04 AM in response to Tom Ropers

Tom,

Unfortunately the only way to prevent it is to disable the pinch gesture (everywhere). There is no option to "lock" the desktop although I wish there was.

Regards,
Captfred

Reply

Answer 3

Oct 26, 2010 9:55 AM in response to Tom Ropers

Figured it out. It was an issue with the BetterTouchTool. When I shut it off the pinch in/out to resize desktop icons was disabled. I restarted BTT then went to Preferences/Gestures/
- Click "Finder" in the Select Application
- Click "Magic Mouse"
- Add new gesture/Pinch In and set to No Action
- Add new gesture/Pinch Out and set to No Action.

Hope that helps.

Reply

Answer 4

dougv71

Level 1

5 points

Dec 31, 2010 11:57 AM in response to josephrobinson

Thanks for the tip. My desktop icons resizing was driving me crazy. BetterTouchTool with the settings you suggest fixed it. Hopefully Apple will add a disable in finder option in the future to the touchpad preference pane. But for now this works.

Reply

Answer 5

Jan 11, 2011 8:03 PM in response to captfred

Captfred-->Thanks for the response. This has been bothering me for weeks!!!

Reply

Answer 6

Jan 31, 2011 4:31 PM in response to josephrobinson

josephrobinson wrote:
Figured it out. It was an issue with the BetterTouchTool. When I shut it off the pinch in/out to resize desktop icons was disabled. I restarted BTT then went to Preferences/Gestures/
- Click "Finder" in the Select Application
- Click "Magic Mouse"
- Add new gesture/Pinch In and set to No Action
- Add new gesture/Pinch Out and set to No Action.

Hope that helps.

I'm missing something here. My goal is to disable the pinch in/out for the Finder only while keeping it active everywhere else.

Followed the directions above (thank you!), then selected Pinch Open & Close in System Prefs so it would work everywhere else, but no go. A careless pinch on the desktop still sends my icons reeling.

I turned Pinch Open & Close OFF in the System Prefs panel, but then the feature didn't work anywhere. It's as if System Prefs if overriding BTT.

Am I just a complete dork for not being able to figure this out, or what?

Help, please...? Thanks!

Reply

Answer 7

Jan 31, 2011 5:04 PM in response to paperqueen

Okay...hang on....

It appears BTT is blocking the pinch thing in some places but not others. Firefox? It continues to zoom even though I've selected Pinch Out > No function in BTT.

Same for the Finder, which is the whole reason I'm doing this. No matter what I have set in BTT, the crazy zoom thing still occurs there, much to my great frustration.

Is there still something obvious I'm missing, or have I completely gone 'round the bend? (Be kind when you answer that, please.)

Message was edited by: paperqueen

Message was edited by: paperqueen

Reply

Answer 8

Jun 10, 2011 8:34 AM in response to paperqueen

To clarify (sorry for a small resurrection), it's not an issue WITH better touch tools. In fact it's a default feature of Finder, and It's been annoying the h*ll out of me so I found this thread looking for a solution. I didn't even have BTT installed until just now -- but what Josheph said was mostly correct.

The way to disable this (USING better touch tools) is

- install it (free)

- in the preferences window, select your appropriate device (mine was Trackpad since I'm on my MacBook Pro)

- ensure "Finder" is selected in the lefthand sidebar (otherwise it will disable pinch zooming system wide)

- add new gesture

- from the "Touchpad Guesture" menu select "pinch in"

- make sure the "Predefined Action" is set to "no action" (entry will show up as blank)

- repeat these steps with "pinch out"

That will disable pinch zoom just in Finder. At least, it worked for me. Hope it does for everyone else too.

P.S. if you want to disable it in other apps too, such as Chrome/Firefox/Safari, just click the "+" button underneath the "Select Application" list and choose the app you want, then repeat the same steps. Cheers.

Reply

Answer 9

Graham.M

Level 1

11 points

Mar 6, 2012 2:18 PM in response to TheOriginalPol

Thank you! This has been driving me nuts for a year! All fixed now.

Reply

Answer 10

Sep 14, 2012 5:50 PM in response to josephrobinson

YES! This has been bugging me for so long and this totally worked to remedy the problem. Major thanks!

Reply

Answer 11

ZX48

Level 1

9 points

Jan 22, 2013 10:57 PM in response to TheOriginalPol

An even better (more refined) solution that works for me, is to do everything as suggested i this thread by TheOriginalPol using Better Touch Tool, but in addition, add TWO more Pinch in/out Gestures for Finder ONLY - this time also selecting one of the modifier keys (e.g. "Option" key). For these gestures set as "Use Apple Default or do nothing".

What this enables is the default disabling of the zoom feature (to prevent accidental zooming of the desktop icons for example). But whenever you'd like to zoom into a document or phot etc in a Finder Window (which are alos now disabled), you can now simply hold down "Option" key and the Pinch functions work again.

This solution works for me on 10.6.8

Reply