Hey, Dude, Where's my Trackpad Prefpane?

Question

Level 1

22 points

Hey, Dude, Where's my Trackpad Prefpane?

Just unpacked and set up my new 27" iMac, decided to get a trackpad with it. For some odd reason, I don't see a prefpane for it the "Show All" System Prefernces window. If I enter "trackpad" in the search field, the top hit is "trackpad", when I select it, it loads the normal-as-far-as-I-can-tell Trackpad prefpane; so I can get to it when I need to, but its non-apparency is baffling. The trick listed here does not seem to apply. I have tried re-running the 10.9.1 updater.

Any ideas? TIA,

Jeff

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1), late 2013 27", 3.5GHz, 8GB

Posted on Jan 19, 2014 2:02 PM

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Answer 1

Joe Bailey

Level 6

12,227 points

Jan 19, 2014 2:18 PM in response to Jeff Mark

You are going to have to use a Finder search for "Trackpad" with "System FIles are included" to find it. It is located in /System/Library/PrefPanes/Trackpad.PrefPane. Caution: wise users do not mess with anything in the /System folder unless they really enjoy reinstalling OS X.

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Answer 2

Jan 19, 2014 2:21 PM in response to Jeff Mark

Open System Preferences, and in the second row, half way along you should see Keyboard, Mouse, Trackpad. Click Trackpad and see what comes up.

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Answer 3

Joe Bailey

Level 6

12,227 points

Jan 19, 2014 2:39 PM in response to Joe Bailey

I forgot to mention the Trackpad preference pane will not appear in System Preferences unless a trackpad is detected as attached to the computer. This is true of all drivers on OS X, they do not install unless they are present and accounted for.

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Answer 4

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

Jan 19, 2014 3:46 PM in response to Jeff Mark

Please post a screenshot that shows what you mean. Be careful not to include any private information.

Start a reply to this message. Click the camera icon in the toolbar of the editing window and select the image file to upload it. You can also include text in the reply.

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Answer 5

Jeff Mark Author

Level 1

22 points

Jan 21, 2014 5:33 PM in response to Jeff Mark

Well, it turns out I was snookered by a new, or at least new-ish, feature of which I was not aware. I was, more or less idly, looking at the menus for System Preferences, and under View saw Customize...

When I selected it, little check boxes appeared next to each of my pref pane icons, including the only unchecked box, next to Trackpad. I checked it, clicked Done, and there it was. Dunno how it got unchecked, but never mind that.

I'm not sure how many pref panes it takes before you have so many you need to hide some (maybe security issues), but, I suppose... I note that other than orgnizing by category or alphabetically, there's still apparently no other way to customize the arrangement of pref pane icons, e.g., their order within a category row.

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Answer 6

Bedza

Level 1

0 points

Apr 26, 2014 3:37 AM in response to Jeff Mark

Guys,

thanks a lot, this is it.

Bedza

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