Magic Trackpad non responsive on Yosemite

This is still a major problem for me on my new iMac Retina after installing the 10.10.2 update today. This problem has been on-going for the past couple months and I believe it is related to the 10.10.1 update, but I'm not sure. I have tried every solution described in this thread, but none of them fix the problem long-term, only temporarily. I have these hang-up problems with the bluetooth keyboard and Magic Trackpad. When things start to go wrong, my keyboard and trackpad usually becomes unresponsive or stuck with key-combos depressed (such as CMD-Q), which is terrible and kills half the apps on my computer before I can stop it.

Some other things I have tried that I did not see mentioned:

• Using a different Magic Trackpad & keyboard from an older 2013 iMac with Yosemite installed. It's literally sitting 5 feet away and does not exhibit this problem. No change. I have also tried using the Magic Trackpad from my iMac Retina on the 2013 iMac and it works fine for days on end.
• Reinstalling Yosemite on top of the existing OS X installation. No change. Just like the rest of the "solutions", this works for a short period of time and then fails.
• Using a MacBook Air to do a Screen Share with the iMac Retina machine so I can control it remotely. This actually works. When my bluetooth keyboard & mouse stop working, I switch to the keyboard & trackpad on my MacBook Air that is remotely controlling the iMac and it works flawlessly. Based on this, I suspect that its a Bluetooth driver problem of some kind.

I happen to work in the software technology world, and I use my iMac Retina machine as my primary work computer, so this has been incredibly aggravating to me. At this point, this $3K machine is utterly useless to me because of how erratically it behaves. Using a MacBook Air to remotely control the keyboard & trackpad is not much of a solution.

Next things I am trying:

• Run a virus scanner... I highly highly doubt that I've got any Malware... but might as well try it.
• Do a complete format & reinstall of the iMac. This is the last resort, and I'm close to doing it. It's a huge time loss to have to do this, but I really don't know what else would fix it. I clearly have a 2013 iMac that works... but this 2014 iMac Retina does not, so it must be a software or hardware problem of some kind.
• Take the computer to an Apple "Genius" and let them figure it out. I've avoided this because the problem is intermittent and I would waste half a day trying to recreate it for them... only to have them tell me something like... "Lets reset the nvram"... which of course will appear to fix it for about 30 minutes or even a couple hours.

Any further insight from Apple would be appreciated.

I tried a few of the suggestions above, but none worked. I figured the preferences might be corrupted. I simply turned bluetooth off, dumped the bluetooth preferences and when I turned bluetooth on again and browsed for a device it automatically paired.

Three Months After My 1st Post

No specific answer but Maybe this offers some Hope.

My trackpad suddenly started working.

Alas I can not say what caused this -- I had tried All the previous suggestions to no avail.

🙂 Was it the upgrade to latest version of Yosemite, 10.10.2 ? --- But I thought it happened just before that (but maybe wrong about that memory of exact date).

I did a clean install for this latest version of Yosemite but it was for other reasons (a QuickTime problem I hoped to fix)

..and I figured it might be good for my computer speed and efficiency.

Having the trackpad now work was perhaps an unexpected bonus. Anyhow...a re-install of Mac OS can't hurt and a clean install can't hurt

and these things have other benefits.

Good luck to you all.

I know that this is an older post, but I was having a similar issue where the trackpad was randomly clicking all over the place issue and i tried the various suggestions regarding bluetooth / rebooting / etc

In the end...I popped out the foot on the lower left of the trackpad and then using the instructions on iFixIt for "Magic Trackpad Rubber Replacement/Reinsertion" I put it back in and now my problem is solved...

I should note that I have an 18 month old that was playing with the trackpad recently and i think a crumb or something got caught in there.

I had same issues. Trackpad not working, but often responding to clicks. Or trackpad having a mind of its own, though not responding to me. Sometimes I could have it respond to touch a few seconds, though only on a small part of the trackpad area and often erratic. SMC reset fixed it. Was driving me crazy.

BTW, the device acted like that out of the box. The SMC fix resets some parameters on your mac. on intel stationary macs it is simply turning off, unplugging power for 15 sec. plugging in, wait 5 sec and push power button to start.

I too am experiencing a jittery magic mouse that keeps on disconnecting. Was fine on Mavericks. I've already tried many suggestions. The problem comes and goes for no apparent (at least to me) reason.

Two days in a row … and many more in the recent past. Moving my MacBook Pro (sleeping) from home to work or vice versa then I find that the Magic Trackpad is often (not always) unresponsive. That is, the local Trackpad is not recognised as being present and connected in the new location. I have separate Trackpads at work and home.

The Trackpad will not connect unless I reboot the MacBook Pro, evenn if I delete the tRackpad and attempt to re-pair it.

This is a SOFTWARE problem, not a hardware problem.

This problem has only started happening since upgrading to Yosemite. The machine is running 10.10.2. The problem still exists. I have tried the other solutions mentioned here in this thread. Only a reboot will fix it.

This is extremely annoying since it requires me to restart all my open applications.

Apple, fix it, now!

Yup this started for me with 10.10.2 on my Macbook Air and hasn't been right since.

My Magic Trackpad just started having this same issue after installing the Yosemite 10.10.3 update. At first I thought it may have been something else, but since I've read this thread, I believe it is the OS doing it. It has even started waking my iMac up and going back to sleep, like there's a ghost in the house screwing with me. I've been avoiding installing the 10.10.4 beta but now I'm wondering if this issue persists in the beta. Curiosity is getting the better of me.

If you have been working with the beta editions of Yosemite, you are supposed to report anything that arises dirctly to Apple. Such matters are not for discussion in the forums.

If you are not, but intend to, the same will apply once you are running a beta edition.

As a matter of fact, that would be by far the best route to make any points about Yosemite.

I fully understand my responsibilities as a beta tester. As indicated in my previous post, I am not currently using a beta, but the official public release of 10.10.3. When 10.10.3 was in beta, I had no issues with the trackpad so there was nothing to report. Since there wasn't a post about this problem with the official public release of 10.10.3, it needed to be brought up that this issue still exists. I did report it to Apple as well. Had it been beta 10.10.4 I would not have bothered this forum with it.

Hello Paul,

Didn't mean to come over as critical; I just didn't pick up that your 10.10.3 Yosemite was not a beta.

People who know about beta versions often follow them through. And it is a better route to draw Apple's attention than via the forums on this one. As you said, it needs to be brought up as Yosemite does seem to cause many problems with Trackpad, Magic mouse and Bluetooth.

I tried everything except just holding down the button even after it started blinking until paired. That worked! thanks.

Yes indeed: sometimes it works fine and sometimes the multi-finger gestures are not working at all!