Two-finger scroll not working on MacBook Pro

I had the same issue with this after upgrading to Maverick. I think that "notifications" failed to properly hide.

The gesture for notifications is two fingers going in from the right of the trackpad (starting off the trackpad), and for closing it it's a two finger swipe to the right.

I just opened and closed notifications and scrolling worked again in my browser.

I'm having problems with two-finger scroll, but only with certain applications. Right now, for example, it's working fine with Safari (I can scroll through this discussion thread just fine), but it's not working in iTunes or iPhoto. For the last few months it has periodically stopped working with iPhoto; today's the first time I've noticed the problem with iTunes. Restarting the application doesn't help. It's very odd and annoying. Restarting the computer seems to make it go away, but that's a pain. I'm using a 2012 Macbook Pro with OSX 10.3.9.

None of the answers in this thread so far helped me. In my case, though, the solution turned out to be straightforward. I enabled "Zoom in or out" under System Preferences/Trackpad/Scroll & Zoom.

Why is this setting described as it is if it controls scolling as well as zoom? That I cannot say.

I had this problem and solved it as follows:

I upgraded my wife's 2006 MacBook Pro (Snow Leopard) to a brand new (July 2014) MacBook Pro Retina 15". I used the migration assistant right after the initial boot of the new machine, importing everything, apps, users, settings.

Right off the bat, 2 finger scrolling did not work.

It turned out that I had to go to System Preferences and choose the ACCESSIBILITY pane, then choose "Mouse & Trackpad" from the list, then click the "Trackpad Options..." button and then click the "Scrolling" button. (I also chose the "with inertia" and set the speed to tick #3 starting from the right.) This immediately corrected the problem.

If someone said this was Windows I'd have believed it. That's just crazy. That option should be in the Trackpad preferences and it isn't.

Couldn't have solved it without other posts on this board, but I've tried to make one clear posting of the solution that worked for me. Thanks.

I was having the same issue with my wives MacBook Air. In her case, the problem was actually the result of changes in the Accessibility section. To fix I went to System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Mouse & Trackpad -> Trackpad Options. In there, I enabled Scrolling.

Hi Your fix for the scrolling worked superbly after i had a new motherboard installed on my MacBook Pro late 2011 after return from the Apple repair program for the graphics issues. I'll certainly keep this command in my folder of favourite terminal commands

I encountered this problem and did everything attempting to fix it - including the terminal command found earlier in this forum. Nothing was working. Am thrilled I came across your posting....IT WORKS! Thank you!

What worked for me was to go to System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad > Trackpad Options... and then make sure [ ] Scrolling is checked. On mine, it was unchecked, which is why it wasn't working.

The Teminal command worked for me too. Just launching the command on Terminal didn't work. I had to run it by prefixing "sudo" to "defaults write -g com.apple.trackpad.scrollBehavior 2". MacBookAir, 11', now running El Capitan. Two-finger scrolling is back, and I didn't have to reboot.

Unfortunately for me terminal fix and SMC PRAM reset didn't work. I saw that after turn off javascript everything is ok. But that's not a solution. Also swipe with two fingers not working not on all sites. And with 3 fingers I can make every swipe properly.

Thank you Cleveland! When my MBP 2011 Early Spring had screwed up on the original trackpad I got fed up and turned off everything having to do with trackpad. I totally forgot about the accessibility portion!

FINALLY! At school I hooked up a wireless mouse (for no known reason) and after using that for a couple months decided to go back to the trackpad and couldn't scroll with two fingers. I had to go to the scroll bar, click and drag to move in all my applications (first-world problems). But this worked for me. If you are having issues after using any kind of mouse, this is where you can fix it!

I have spent HOURS trying to solve this problem. The terminal command did not work for me, even though I know it did for many others. And an hour on the phone with mac support was no help either.

The problem is your trackpad preference files. They are corrupt and need to be removed.

Go to the finder> library and the preference folder.

Then find and delete the following files

com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad.plist

com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad.plist

Restart your mac and the two finger scroll will instantly work again.

this did not help me, actually - what worked for me was to go to Accessibility; select mouse/trackpad, select trackpad options and turn scrolling "on".

I switched it back off and trashed the prefs as you suggested but it didn't help, so Im back to "scrolling on" in the accessibility pref pane.

Just an FYI, your mileage may vary.

Nashville 1012, Thanks for this tip! This worked for me on my Touch bar MacBook Pro 2016 on day one after restoring a time machine backup of a 2008 iMac. The Terminal "defaults ..." above didn't do anything. Oddly enough my wife account that was also restored didn't have this issue. Since this fix was within my home folder / library, it sounds like ours was a specific account preference issues versus global preferences.