MacBook Air M2 trackpad is jumpy and freezing when dragging

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MacBook Air M2 trackpad is jumpy and freezing when dragging

Hi everyone! I have a MacBook Air M2 running on Tahoe 26.5.2, and I’ve really enjoyed using it. However, just recently after I updated my OS from Sequoia my trackpad has been acting up. It’s become very difficult to use whenever I try to drag something, the cursor becomes jumpy, stutters, and sometimes feels like it’s freezing.

Has anyone experienced this before? I’d really appreciate any advice or suggestions on how to fix it. Thanks in advance!

Posted on Jul 20, 2026 6:51 PM

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Answer 1

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neuroanatomist

Level 9

60,813 points

Jul 20, 2026 8:12 PM in response to k3ntoi_

Cursor lag and freezing are usually due to a background process 'hogging' your processors by using significant resources. Check Activity Monitor, CPU tab (sort by % CPU) to see what's running hard.

Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

If you like, you can post a screenshot of the top few rows, for example:

If the culprit is corespotlightd (as has been reported by some users), then Spotlight indexing is the issue. If the problem has been occurring for only a few hours, give it time to complete indexing. If longer than that, rebuild the Spotlight index:

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

If that doesn’t work, Copy/Paste this into Terminal. sudo will ask for your password. Just type the password and hit return. It won't show anything on screen. Those two commands essentially nuke all the Spotlight records then force a reindex. You may need to restart or log out/in after running the commands.

sudo mdutil -X /; sudo mdutil -i on /

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