Force Touch Trackpad input while typing

Amen.

dobes918 wrote:

I hope some of you guys are willing to try this and tell me what happens.

It's clear to me that the problem originates in the Force Touch trackpad, since all of us on this thread have Macs with that feature. So about three days ago I went to System Preferences>Trackpad and unchecked Force Click and haptic feedback. Two things happened. First, my cursor has not skipped at all since then. Of course, I have been trying to train my hands not to brush the trackpad so as to prevent that from happening, but it was still happening occasionally. Now it is not, though it has only been three days. Second - I can still force click. I still get haptic feedback. I check over and over, but that box is unchecked, my cursor is behaving normally, and I can still use force click.

Can anyone confirm that this works for them, too? I hope it's not just a temporary thing....

Unfortunately, this doesn't solve anything for me. I've had it disabled for a while now. Still experiencing the same issues. :-(

I permanently disabled "tap to click" because I could not get automator to work with these instructions. At any rate, having to remember to toggle "tap to click" on and off will probably annoy me even more than the jumping cursor. I noticed the problem within a few days of purchasing the MBPro back in APril 2015. I am absolutely kicking myself for not takingthe machine back immediately. If I wanted to put up with an endless stream of annoyances, I would have purchased something other than apple. Anyway, live and learn, my very last purchase for sure....

I have what I think could be a decent solution to this problem. Like many on this thread, I have tried a lot of things. I arm-twisted my local Apple Store in to replacing the trackpad (which seemed to help) and I wound up getting a replacement at work. But the new MBP has the same issue – so I'm 100% convinced that this is a design flaw.

Apple built a trackpad that was supposed to have many levels of functionality based on how hard you press and how many fingers are used in the gesture. But they forgot about the simple ergonomics of how people hold their hands when they type. Like when Steve Jobs "solved" AntennaGate by telling everyone to hold the iPhone differently, it seems that Apple Support is telling us to type differently. Hopefully they'll wake up and fix this soon...

In the meantime, I have installed BetterTouchTool. What I haven't seen in any of the entries in this thread is someone who has said they got good results. I feel I have gotten good results. It's early days but here's what I did: Click on Advanced (left side of menu bar) and on Trackpad (right side). About halfway down you'll see "Disable trackpad gestures after hitting a keyboard key to prevent accidental gestures while typing". I clicked the boxes next to "Reenable gestures..." and "Thumb recognition..." I pushed the slider to .076 (just a guess) to set the timer.

So far it seems to help. I sent an email to the developer asking for advice on this problem and didn't hear back. The BTT web site is pretty short on advice generally and unfortunately didn't help either. Ironically, earlier today I ran into the issue again and felt deflated and then I realized that I had rebooted and BTT was not running. I launched it and the problem has not reoccured since then. I realized I hadn't set BTT to launch after a reboot.

Hopefully this helps others and continues to work for me...

I just downloaded Better Touch Tool to try it out. Apparently it's not for free?

It's not free, but not expensive. I love it -- but it didn't completely stop my jumpy cursor, though it made it better. The only thing that completely stops the problem is unchecking 'tap to click' in System Preferences - but I don't like to do that.

SAME **** PROBLEM! Resting my wrists on either side of the trackpad causes the cursor to randomly move and re-insert itself in the document, putting letters into the wrong **** place. APPLE! This is a BRAND NEW laptop!!!

The only reason I started using apple (about 10 years ago) was because I felt "it just works". I gave up access to proper MS Office, Visio, MS Project, etc. and endured the awkwardness of using different laptops for work and home because I was tired of what I felt to be erratic, unreasonable behaviour of windows laptops. Well congratulations Apple, you have now officially caught up with Windows and have become equally annoying...

I hate to admit it but I agree with you. I got an email from the Apple Community because I have subscribed to this thread. I clicked on the email entry and Mail crashed. "Sorry for the inconvenience." I'll bet something crashes every other day. My wife's Windows 10 PC is as solid as a rock.

Well,

The main reason why you find it so annoying is because you expect Apple products to "just work", so when they don't, we get mad since we are used to the smooth ride 🙂

If you want to try annoying, go and buy Surface Book. You will stop complaining about Apple's minor annoyances pretty quickly.

That trackpad problem needs to be fixed. Worst part is, no one is really saying anything about this. How come we only have 5 pages, and the product has been released for almost one year!!!

Did anyone get a confirmation from Apple that this is being worked on?

Frankly, we shouldn't have any annoyances for what we pay for these machines. A laptop where you can't rest your wrists on either side of the trackpad? Not ON the trackpad, but on the actual case. It's a LAPTOP. It goes on your lap, so where do your wrists go?

Hey Apple, you used to be excellent. Now you're producing products with known flaws and not fixing them. What gives?

I'm sure this will get lost at the bottom of the thread, but I've discovered a workaround that seems to be working OK for me so far.

Go to your Trackpad preferences and change the "Click" to "Firm".

So far this seems to have worked for me. I typed up this whole post without one wandering mouse click. I think the problem is that with the new forcetouch trackpads, there is no actual mechanical device to register the click, only a (customizable) amount of force. I've found that for me, both the "Medium" and "Light" setting lead to accidentally "clicking" the trackpad, thereby activating it when I'm typing. Setting it to "Firm" seems to have eliminated this issue for me.

Hope this helps someone else that is frustrated by this behavior.

Cheers,

-Z

My understanding is that for most of us this issue is evident when the "Tap to click" option is turned ON which amplifies the problem. You have it unchecked in your screen shot which tells me that in your case the problem is that you are not just touching the trackpad while typing, but also pressing on it with sufficient force to trigger a click.... hence, in your case, it is helpful to set it to "Firm". (I have set mine to "light" to approximate the benefits of "tap to click" while keeping the "tap to click" cleared until they fix this issue....)

I couldn't take it any more as the only thing that ultimately worked reliably was unchecking tap to click, and I hate having to click all the time -- just couldn't get used to it. So I took my new little Macbook that is perfect in every other way to the Apple Store to have its top case replaced. Diagnostic tests did not show anything wrong - but the genius saw it skip as I was typing, and they will try to repair it.

Unfortunately, the Apple Store I took it to - Sherway Gardens in Toronto - will take 3-5 days to fix it, even though the part is in stock. This was something of a shock to me, as I need it for work, and in multiple repairs to my Apple computers over the last 10 years, I've had repairs done while I waited in Bratislava, Vienna, New York City, and Boston. This is the first time it's ever been kept -- and I'm really upset.

If they can fix the leaping cursor, though, it will be worth it. I'll post when I get it back.

dobes918 wrote:

I couldn't take it any more as the only thing that ultimately worked reliably was unchecking tap to click, and I hate having to click all the time -- just couldn't get used to it. So I took my new little Macbook that is perfect in every other way to the Apple Store to have its top case replaced. Diagnostic tests did not show anything wrong - but the genius saw it skip as I was typing, and they will try to repair it.

Unfortunately, the Apple Store I took it to - Sherway Gardens in Toronto - will take 3-5 days to fix it, even though the part is in stock. This was something of a shock to me, as I need it for work, and in multiple repairs to my Apple computers over the last 10 years, I've had repairs done while I waited in Bratislava, Vienna, New York City, and Boston. This is the first time it's ever been kept -- and I'm really upset.

If they can fix the leaping cursor, though, it will be worth it. I'll post when I get it back.

Thanks for the update! I'm very curious if they (oops, it just skipped again so I had to correct it) can fix it and what they will say regardless of if they can fix it or not.

For me while I do prefer tapping over clicking, I wouldn't even mind disabling tap-to-click and clicking except that I would lose double-tap dragging. I simply cannot drag a file across one side of the screen to the other with a single click on the built-in touchpad or the magic trackpad. Nor can I go across multiple monitors or spaces. It's very annoying. With just clicking it always ends up getting stuck somewhere and refusing to move, or dropping accidentally on the wrong thing. At least with typing you can fix it, but with dragging it will mess all sorts of things up.

Anyway, I really hope you get some good news!