Have to click twice for mouse to do anything

I have been having problems with having to click my mouse twice to get a response for a long time. I'm not sure how long it's been. I finally decided to check if others were having this problem. (I thought it was something I was doing wrong, not a computer problem. I'm not proficient at computer stuff.) Help! I'm not sure what to do. Your answer will have to be given in simple terms - sorry to say.

I've been having this problem for months also and I can say without a doubt it is caused by VLC and MagicPrefs running at the same time. Closing either one solves the problem. Not sure why exactly this occurs but it's an easy fix.

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Hi Deborah, it is possible this problem is caused by VLC alone and not a combination of the two. Anytime I notice this problem (having to click twice on every link in my internet browser or anything else for that matter) I simply exit VLC (right click on the icon in the task bar and choose quit) and the problem is immediately solved. Does this work for you or are you noticing this issue even with VLC not running?

I also was having to click twice (at least twice, sometimes three or four times) to get a click to register on my Macbook Air. An alternate but equally annoying method was click-holding for a couple seconds to get a click to register. I was all set to reinstall the OS when I decided to do the now-obvious thing and try an external USB mouse to determine whether it was a trackpad problem or a software problem. The USB mouse worked fine, so that pointed to a trackpad problem.

What I eventually discovered was that clicking on different spots on the trackpad were more successful than others. I always thought a click was a click regardless of where your finger was on the trackpad, but I guess I was wrong. I normally click with my right thumb at about the 6:00 position on the trackpad, but for the past few weeks this rarely worked on the first try. However, by instead clicking in the lower right corner in the 4:30 position, I got a registered click every time. This only took a little retraining by slightly rotating my wrist when browsing. I have confirmed this fix by subsequently browsing for days without a click problem. My case was likely different than some other people who had software problems, but I thought I would mention it in case it helps someone who had certain locations on his trackpad wearing out.

I should mention that the apparent "wearing out" of the certain click spots on the Macbook Air trackpad only happened after four years of heavy use. So I imagine I simply eroded some contact surface under the trackpad where I have clicked hundreds of thousands of times.

I too am having the same problem and have read all your posts with interest. However, when giving your answers to help you all seem to forget that some of us are very new to computers and don't understand all the tech speak and abreviations. So unfortunately all your helpful suggestions are way over my head. I need things explained with step by step instructions.

YES, I do MM, but the newest post that came up regarding my query was over 4 years old.

In fact every time I surf a problem for my 2014 27" iMac Retina...the most recent resonse is usually 4+ old and that just not is acceptiable.

Especially given rise to the fact I paid 3500$ for this over priced aluminum can.

Same problem here. It happens when i use touchpad and when i use my usb mouse. It started after i upgraded my RAM and updated to 10.6.7. Any solution?

Maybe it's just a coincidence. My syslog said:

VLC[2387]: Media key event tap was disabled by timeout

during such a twice click problem.

Until now I could not reproduce the problem after quitting VLC.

Problem is sill not repruducabel after killing VLC.

Even after upgrading to Lion this issue didn't go away. Hade to format my hard drive and make a clean installation of Lion. And only after fresh installation i got rid of this bug.

Didn't have this program, but unticking "enable access for assistive devices" helped. Thanks!