4 Finger Trackpad Gestures Not Working

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Level 1

2 points

4 Finger Trackpad Gestures Not Working

Recently, I just noticed that my 4 finger trackpad gestures are not working. These gestures include swiping 4 fingers to the left or right to switch pages, and swiping 4 fingers up to get Mission Control. I have not done anything differently and have been using these features a lot lately. Also, I have checked in Settings to make sure the box is checked for these features. How do I fix this? I am running Mountain Lion on an early 2011 13" Macbook Pro.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)

Posted on Feb 15, 2013 10:01 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 15, 2013 10:06 AM in response to adam1232

Go under Point and Click in trackpad settings. Uncheck 3 finger drag on the main page. Go under More Gestures and set swipe between pages to 2 fingers and swipe between full screen apps to 3 fingers. Then test again with 2 and 3 fingers. See if that works. If it does, set your full-screen apps to 4 fingers if that's what you want and reenable 3 finger drag on the main page if you want to use that.

Enabling 3 finger drag has the tendancy to break the other More Options part of the setup.

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Answer 2

adam1232 Author

Level 1

2 points

Feb 15, 2013 10:10 AM in response to SwankPeRFection

Thanks, I actually just rebooted and it started working again. So if this ever happens again I should just uncheck three finger dragging and change the switching full screen apps to 3 fingers then change all of them back to re-enable them?

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Answer 3

Feb 15, 2013 10:35 AM in response to adam1232

Enabling 3 finger dragging automatically disables your ability to flip screen with the multi-finger drags... for obvious reasons. I fell for this hidden issue a while ago too, that's how I know about it. I don't use 3 finger drag to move objects around the screen. I've left that unchecked but I do use the other gestures to switch pages and screens.

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Answer 4

adam1232 Author

Level 1

2 points

Feb 15, 2013 10:44 AM in response to SwankPeRFection

You sure? Because, I have both three finger dragging and 4 finger screen changing enabled and I'm able to use both features.

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Answer 5

Feb 15, 2013 11:14 AM in response to adam1232

Right, if you have 4 finger set on the other one. But by default it's set to 3 finger and if it's set as that, and you enable 3 finger drag on the main page, there used to be a bug where it wouldn't switch the other to 4 fingers automatically and you'd just lose the swipe altogether until you manually disabled the 3 finger drag and then switched the other around.

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