My Magic Trackpad stops working

After having this issue for a while and speaking to someone at the Apple Store, the sad truth is... if it's still not working after tying EVERYTHING... then the trackpad is basically dead. It's lived it's life and the programing has crapped out. There's nothing that can be done at that point.

In so many words that's what I was told.

Have you found any solutions for this? I am having the same problem. I have tried three pairs of batteries, deleting trackpad and pairing again, resetting PRAM, erasing the hard drive, reinstalling Mavericks and restoring from backup. I received a new trackpad from AppleCare but still have the same problem.

Same issue here - always happens about 60 seconds after waking from sleep (but not every time I wake it).

I have an old Apple USB mouse to connect when it happens, and when I use it to disconnect and then reconnect the trackpad on the Bluetooth menu in the Menubar, it fixes the issue (until the next time it randomly happens a short time after awakening).

I am still having the issue (even after getting a new Bluetooth board). I did discover though that when the cursor freezes I can launch Bluetooth preferences through Spotlight and that somehow unfreezes the cursor. I do: Cmd-Space to call up spotlight, then search Bluetooth, arrow down to System Preferences Bluetooth in the Spotlight results and press Return.

Bluetooth prefs come up and there's a little spinning gear. After a few seconds the cursor starts working again.

Still searching for a solution...

I think my problem is related. @ 1st it only happened sometimes after awakening from sleep. Now it's started happening while I'm already using it. I can fix it by any of:

(1) removing the batteries & putting them right back in,

(2) unscrewing the screw to the batteries part way & then rescrewing it,

(3) banging on the battery end with my hand (left side works better).

I have had same issue since upgrade to Mavericks... My mac is an iMac 2.4 GHz Intel core 2 duo with 4gb ram from 2007... are others using similar? If you have a newer machine are you experiencing this?

Also, other users on same machine are using magic mouse with far less frequent occurence of this, but still happens from time to time, also the bluetooth keyboard.

Mine is a mid-2011 21.5" iMac 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5. I've only had problems with the keyboard once when some keys worked and others didn't, the trackpad was also not responding at that time. All other times when the trackpad is non-responsive the keyboard works fine. I have a new trackpad, Bluetooth board, logic board.

What works for me is to keep System Preferences open all the time to the Bluetooth settings. When the trackpad becomes non-responsive I do a Command-Tab to bring the System Preferences to the foreground. That makes the trackpad responsive again. Then I do a Command-H to hide the preferences until the next time. Wish there was a permanent fix.

Hi All,

I struggled with this for days, including looking at drivers and .plist files. I finally wondered whether it was a hardware issue. I verified that the battery chamber screw cap was entirely inserted. I then picked up the trackpad and whacked the screw cap firmly against my hand a couple of times. Suddenly the "Connected" message showed up on my display!

Perhaps something in the battery chamber is losing a connection periodically. Perhaps there is a hardware design flaw that shows up in some of these devices.

Apple...please look into this. It seems to be happening to a lot of users and ruins the experience of what is otherwise a very cool HI device.

It might not be a hardware issue - I remove the battery cap (disconnect the power) to get things going again, and whacking the trackpad against your hand would also disconnect the batteries (only for a short time, but long enough to "reboot" the trackpad).

That's exactly what I do.

& I don't get a message saying Bluetooth is disconnected until after I do that.

I have had this problem for quite some time, and only with trackpad. I do not know what the root problem is. I have not attempted to analyze when -- my computer does not "sleep", but my screen will lock (password required) and the monitor will shutoff. The trackpad frequently, but not always, becomes non-responsive within a minute.

My "solution" (technically, not a solution but a workaround) is to press the power button on the side and hold it until the trackpad turns off, and then to turn the trackpad back on by again pressing the power button. I will usually see a "connection lost" followed by "connection restored" message on the screen. When the connection is again restored, the track pad is again responsive.

Voodoo trick: I have a magic mouse that I no longer use in favor of the trackpad. Normally, the mouse sits to the side and is OFF. If I turn the mouse on and let the mouse connect, the trackpad will suddenly become responsive. I turn off the mouse and continue working with the trackpad. Weird.

I had the same problem. I have found a work around - sort of. I have unchecked the option to "Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer" (System Preferences / Bluetooth / Advanced). I no longer have the problem. Having to wake the computer another way (I have a USB wireless mouse so no problem for me) and waiting a second or two for the bluetooth devices to connect is less annoying than continually losing trackpad connection. I hope that helps you too.

So, I had the same issue and I believe that I have found the solution (at least, it was the solution to my problem). I use a bluetooth keyboard and trackpad and noticed this issue when my trackpad got to about 40% life. As it turned out, when I plugged in a USB mouse and went to my bluetooth devices, I had two pointing devices listed. One was a bluetooth magic mouse that was just out of range. The other was my trackpad. The mouse was on a shelf and had something on top of it that was holding the button down. It was turned on somehow and had a battery level of about 90%. When I went and turned that unit off, my trackpad started working again without any issue. I turned it back on (where it was left) and I lost my trackpad. I then changed the batteries in my trackpad and it worked. I took out the changed batteries and put the original ones back in and, sure enough, it stopped working until I turned off the old magic mouse.

So, it looks like if you use multiple pointing devices and have them in range, it defaults to the one with stronger signal. The reason why trackpad worked was that it had the stronger signal until the batteries started to die.