Q: Drag and drop stops working in maverick

I can no longer drag n drop on Mavericks either - it drives me crazy and I don't have time to restart all the time to fix it. And even if I restart, I may only get 2 drag and drops before it happens again. This seems like a huge bug on Apple's part.

I read that it could have something to do with mouse software...but it seems bigger than that.

I can't drag from a folder in the dock to an open folder, but I can drag from an open folder to an open folder. I can't drag an attachment in email to an open folder. I can't pull an image from a web browser either.

Anybody figure anything out? How did this even get out the door at Apple?!

Add me to the list. This is completely unacceptable. I have to paste instead of just dragging or option-dragging. What a PITA. Apple, please fix.

it happens to me, too.  sometimes finder got messed up ad I had to click some pixels away where nothing exist, to start dragging file/icons on desktop. 

I can restart finder to reset everytime this happens, I restarted finder 3 times already today.  what a nightmare.

My iMac is brand new (one week old), and I had this issue on the very first day. Today its happened a 2nd time.

A reboot DOES fix it.

Restarting Finder either via dock or from terminal does NOT fix it in my case.

I cannot drag icons around on desktop, but it also affects all other apps (in this case I cant drag icons out of PathFinder).

Very annoying, I wish I just stuck with Mountain Lion. OSX is becoming a piece of junk

Same problem. Across all applications, Finder included, drag-and-drop simply stops working. The only remedy is to restart - a real nuissance.

Thanks XF45....worked for me and far easier and quicker than a restart....Thank you!

Well, if it helps I'm fine. But still, it is not a clean way to do things.

And what is very annoying is that noone sounds to care about this problem at Apple. I did not see a message from the team for this exact problem (the only answer at the far beginning of the thopic was not appropriate).

So who are we ?

This problem is giving me so much work that I'm not sure to continue to be an Apple fan, what I am from 1991... (yes, I'm nearly old ).

I just hope the next update will resolve this.

New hour in France, which brings a touch of summer, with a nice temperature outside... I will forget my Apple problems today by having a long "promenade".

Have a nice day

I know how you feel! I have been an avid Mac user since 1986 (converted DOS-head). I'm disappointed we haven't heard much from Apple regarding this "Drag & Drop" issue. My 2010 17" MacBook Pro running Mountain Lion still has this issue (6 months now). I've just added the "Sleep" step at each start-up. Takes about 10 seconds. That seems to take care of my Drag & Drop and Photoshop Selection problems. A few weeks ago I ran a thourough disk repair and permissions repair. The Drag & Drop issue went away for about 2 days, then returned. I figure it's quicker to run "Sleep" than a bunch of drive repairs. Maybe this issue is somehow related to permissions. One of these days I'll try Mavericks to see if that fixes this weird problem.

I had this problem on day 1, of a brand new iMac with Mavericks. So I'm afraid Mavericks doesn't fix it.

If anything, it may even be more susceptible to it. I never saw the drag and drop issue once in 4 years on SL, Lion or ML.

There are some errors in console when it happens. But the error codes just suggest invalid drag handle, which still doesn't give much clue whats causing it.

Try Drag & Dropping in columns mode in the Finder. It's a horrible nightmare. The columns keep trying to readjust themselves, so you can no longer see the file you’re trying to drag nor can you see the target folder. I'm wondering, did they assign the Mavericks project to an intern?
If they cared about their customers at all, they would provide any easy way to go back to the far superior Mountain Lion. I esitimate Mavericks burns about an extra 2-3 hours per week of my time. I don't feel like a Maverick, I feel like a Muggins.

Hello Tom,

Maverick DOES NOT fix this issue. I was on Snow leopard and went directly to Mavericks. And this problem, on my side, appeared on Mavericks. And, frankly, if I knew, I would not have change to Mavericks. SL was a real professionnal OS. It has been really stable for years. The few advantages of Mavericks are not enough to convince me that it is better, vs the problems I encountered, especially the drag and drop.

So don't change for this item....

BR

Thanks guys. Wish I had stayed with SL. Never had any problems with it. I started running into issues with software upgrades not being compatible with SL. Upgraded to ML for this reason. Now thinking about adding an SSD & setting it up as my boot drive with Mavericks. Be my luck that Drag & Drop bug would reappear!

I just upgraded to an SSD and it solved a bunch of issues I'd been experiencing with Mavericks, and pre Mavericks as well. I'm now wondering if this is part of the reaon this issue appears to be getting zero traction from Apple. Maybe they're all testing using SSD's, and are not able to reproduce the issue. Speculation, I know, and I find it hard to imagine that they wouldn't also be testing on older hardware. But, I can promise the upgrade will be practically life changing; my goodness, things just zip along now, and so many annoying behaviors have disappeared; it was worth it to regain my sanity.

Thanks wkhatch! I can't wait to get my sanity back AND have a faster Mac!

i am experiencing this issue for the first time on mavericks on my 2013 mbp. i cannot drag website links from the URL bar to my desktop or any folder as i have always done. also not able to drag images either. all browsers seem to be affected so it is not a browser thing like i would have guessed.