Right-click not working on trackpad

Had the same issue and it was driving me crazy. Enabling/Disabling Secondary Tap under the Two Fingers section in trackpad preferences had no effect. First clue was in this thread earlier when I saw somone saying tapping wasn't working but actually pressing down hard gave the desired result. Voila, same w/ me. So, I went back to preferences and I noticed that, somehow, under the One Finger section the Tap to Click box was unchecked. No clue how that happened as I use this hundreds of times daily, at least, and immediatly noticed when it broke/changed. Checked that box and all is well.

splig,

Try using Yiagos' solution. It worked well for me. I've used this method for fixing other issues with previous Apple computers that I've owned. It's called "reseting the P-RAM"

• Shut down the computer
• Turn on the computer and immediately press and hold the CMD+OPTION(ALT)+P+R keys until you hear the sound of the Mac restarting. (You should hear the startup tone a total of two times.)
• Release the keys.

This should solve your issue. If the whole right side of the trackpad isn't responding to touch, it could be a hardware issue. You might also try some fresh batteries if the problem persists.

I hope this helps,

bvw_tech

I had this same problem but i found a solution on another forum! v v v v

Ok so, this might sound completely irrelevant, but try turning off your bluetooth. It worked for me and everything was normal after that. I don't even have a bluetooth mouse or anything connected to apple that it might have connected with, but this totally worked and i'm so happy! I thought i would share it, even though this is an old thread! Best of luck!

This happened to me, too. I went to the Apple icon in the top left corner, and chose "Preferences". Then I went to Track Pad. There's a video playing but I didn't watch it (because I'd seen it before). On the left, the check mark beside "secondary click" was gone under the "two finger" menu. So I turned it back on. I think it happened when I got a software update, not sure.

If anyone is still hung up on this.. Provided your trackpad is not mechanicaly bad.

Go to trackpad under system preferences and look under "secondary click" and you will see a little drop down menu. There you can select the option you want, two finger tap, or actial click on bottom right of trackpad etc.

Let me bump this thread.

My MBP recently failed to secondary click with two fingers on one hand BUT if I use one finger from the right hand and one finger from the left hand, it works fine.

Secondary click (click or tap with two fingers) is enabled.

What say you?

I recently got myself a Macbook Pro 8,1 with a fresh Mavericks 9.1, & after exploring this new Mavericks for a bit I realized that my MB's trackpad right-click button wasn't doing what it does on my MB 7,1 – bring up context menus. After going to Obvious Place #1 thru Obvious Place #7 or so, I was dumbfounded as to HOW to get my MB's goll-danged trackpad right-click button to work & bring up context menus in Mavericks. I KNEW it was possible, but..... ugghh...

I read several of the "here's how to fix it" articles in Google hits, & then in posts here, tried about 3 of these here but none of them got my MB's trackpad right button to work the way I wanted it to.

So I gave up on poring through all these posts for other people's "should fix it's" & went back to just dinkin' around with my Mac's Preferences & so forth.

And then... TA DA! Found it.

Real simple, guys & gals.... 😉

You who haven't found "the fix" yet are gonna kick yer hineys hehe (I'm sure that somebody's already posted the "fix" somewhere in these 4 or so pages of posts).

I'm not going to continue reading through all the posts here until I find this DUH! 😝 no-brainer "fix" (which it's not, really. it's just the way it's 'sposed to be done), so I'm just going to post this along with a screenshot I took showing where ya go & what ya do to get your trackpad's right-click button to work as the contextual click button, which oughta pretty much end any more questions from anyone here about how ya do it, at least from those with Mavericks.

So all's well, life's good.

Well, most of the time....

Sunny & it's finally kinda warm in Denver today. 😎 That's sure good.

And I got a a couplea classy Macbooks in front of me & not a Windoze Frankenstein machine..... And that's REAL good. 😁

Kevin Kendall

Mac 1987-89 | The Dark Side 👿 1989-2006 uggh | Back To Mac 2006-Infinity

I know this thread is old but I had the same problem on my 13" Mid-2009 macbook pro. For some reason with the option to click bottom right corner of the trackpad and have it act as "secondary click" I checked and unchecked, restarted, looked for updates etc.

THEN i fixed it.

In apple menu>preferences>expose & spaces. Goto Expose Tab up top and make sure that "ALL WINDOWS:" says "F9" in the closest box. And mine DID say "secondary click" on the other option but i set it to "-" and now my right click works. Hope this helps you all 🙂 It worked for me...

So, no two-finger tap for secondary clip in Finder when I try in a list. Snow Leopard 10.6.8, Late '08 Macbook (not pro). But when I try the two finger tap in my Browser, it's just fine. When I two finger tap in the Finder pane that gives the info for the highlighted file (in Column view), it works just fine. If I control-click on the highlited filename, no result. But if I go up and click in Actions, the functions are there and work properly. Software Update shows that I'm current (maybe this is the problem?).

So, for example, if I try to two finger tap for secondary click on the highlighted "Chord Paper.pdf", nothing happens. It's the same when I use a control-(single) click - nothing happens. But if I two finger tap to secondary click under the "More info..." button, I get full functionality. Here in my browser window, it works just fine. I am running really low on hard drive space while this is happening, 1.7GB left. But I've been down that low before and nothing like this has happened.

I have a 3 month old MacBook Pro running on 10.6.7. Today, single tapping and the secondary two finger click stopped working. Tapping the track pad gently - no pressing - will not do anything (opening links, selcting files, opening folders etc.), and tapping it gently with two fingers will not do the secondary click either. However, if i actually *press* the trackpad, then it will. finger srcorlling, swiping, pinching and all that seems to work fine. only the "gentle tap" (no actual trackpad clicking) doesnt work anymore. I had to select press bottom corner to get the secondary click function for now

Any leads anyone?

System Preferences > Trackpad

Under the 1 Finger section mark the boxes that you want to have marked and to make sure that it's the right thing hover over it and it will show you an example video of what it does.

splizaat, thank you so much for your hint! i understand this is an older thread, but i've almost gone nuts over this secondary click thing -- just have my macbook for 5 months, and love it dearly, but i always used ctrl+click as i couldn't figure out why tapping/clicking with two fingers wouldn't work. today at 4am i snapped and decided to find a solution, no matter what. and after raiding the net and finally registering on here, i find your suggestion and it's EXACTLY THAT. i wasn't sure it would do it for me since meanwhile we have lion, but it's the very same thing. i was worried it might be a bug with my macbook at first, then realised some preferences must be contradicting without being able to find out which as i only tried trackpad constellations..

anyway, long story short: THANK YOU SO MUCH. you saved me so much trouble! and after my thorough research i have to say you seem to be the only person on the net who figured this out 🙂

(i just had to express my deepest gratitude in this absurdely long post, couldn't help it)

Hi, I really got nut on how to set the right click under boot camp environnent.

Dear Splizzat and laramae,

are you saying set in Expose - all secondary click or just some?

I can't get the same result as you say, would you mind to instruct me the step how to do it?

Thank very much

Cliff