How can I turn off the 3-finger click paste action?

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Level 1

6 points

How can I turn off the 3-finger click paste action?

As of a few days ago, my Macbook Pro has been doing something that's a huge time waster: For no apparent reason, it started pasting some recent (but not always the most recent) clipboard string into whatever window I was trying to type to. It took a long time to stumble onto a reliable way of making it do this without using CMD-V, but I eventually found that a 3-finger tap on the trackpad will do it. However, it happens mostly when my fingers aren't near the trackpad. Of course, it's impossible to type on a Macbook without having at least your thumbs near the trackpad, but that's only two "fingers", and a 2-finger tap doesn't do a paste.

Also, I'm pretty sure that it has happened when nothing but air was near the trackpad. About 15 minutes ago, I was editing (vim) a file, and tried exiting. I found that I couldn't type the :q command without getting stuff pasted into the window, even if I awkwardly held my hands well above the keyboard so I couldn't accidentally touch the trackpad. It took a lot of tries slowly reaching down with 1 or 2 fingers to enter a ':', a 'q', a '!' and finally hit the return key, and I finally got out. It's also hard to type shell commands in a Terminal window, due to the constant addition of some recent clipboard string.

I've dug around in System Preferences, in both the trackpad and keyboard settings, but I haven't found anything that fixes the problem. I did find a few 1- and 2-finger trackpad "click" settings, which I turned off, but it didn't help. I could only find a few 3-finger settings, and none of them seem to have anything to do with cut-and-paste or anything related.

Anyway, it's a big time waster. especially when editing. Pasting a random string into most editors will usually make them go insane, of course, and when this happens in such an uncontrolled fashion, you spend most of your time recovering than you do editing.

This is on a Macbook Pro with 15-inch retina, OS X 10.9.5.

Any clues for how to return this "feature" to sanity?

Posted on Jun 28, 2016 10:49 AM

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Answer 1

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Jun 29, 2016 7:53 AM in response to jc1742

three finger gestures on a mac do not appear to include a cut/paste functionality

Use Multi-Touch gestures on your Mac - Apple Support

Turn on "three finger drag" for your Force Touch trackpad - Apple Support

do you have a 3rd party "gesture" utility installed that is overriding the functionality of os 10.9?

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

685,233 points

Jun 29, 2016 7:54 AM in response to jc1742

Try a restart.

Do a backup, using either Time Machine or a cloning program, to ensure files/data can be recovered. Two backups are better than one.

Try setting up another admin user account to see if the same problem continues. If Back-to-My Mac is selected in System Preferences, the Guest account will not work. The intent is to see if it is specific to one account or a system wide problem. This account can be deleted later.

Isolating an issue by using another user account

If the problem is still there, try booting into the Safe Mode using your normal account. Disconnect all peripherals except those needed for the test. Shut down the computer and then power it back up after waiting 10 seconds. Immediately after hearing the startup chime, hold down the shift key and continue to hold it until the gray Apple icon and a progress bar appear. The boot up is significantly slower than normal. This will reset some caches, forces a directory check, and disables all startup and login items, among other things. When you reboot normally, the initial reboot may be slower than normal. If the system operates normally, there may be 3rd party applications which are causing a problem. Try deleting/disabling the third party applications after a restart by using the application un-installer. For each disable/delete, you will need to restart if you don't do them all at once.

Safe Mode

Safe Mode - Mavericks

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Answer 3

SnickZ.

Community Specialist

Jun 29, 2016 8:09 AM in response to jc1742

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities, jc1742,

From what I understand after reading your post, your MacBook Pro's copy buffer seems to hold onto things and dump them into areas you had no intention of pasting. I've actually experienced this problem too and it's very annoying when you have to edit something you didn't do. I'll be glad to explain how I was able to get that to stop. Test after every step to see if that's fixed the problem.

Since booting in Safe Mode can clear things out.

Try safe mode if your Mac doesn‘t finish starting up

You'll also need to determine whether this is occurring in just your account or on the entire Mac.

How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac

If it's happening in another account, the problem is most likely system wide and you'll most need to reinstall OS X. But, even though reinstalling doesn't remove anything, it's always wise to have a backup of your MacBook Pro in case it's needed.

Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac

Once you're comfortable that your information is secure, reinstall the operating system while in recovery mode.

How to reinstall OS X on your Mac

If the problem persists after reinstalling, that means your MacBook Pro is having hardware issues and needs to be evaluated at an Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider.

Take care!

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Answer 4

jc1742 Author

Level 1

6 points

Jun 30, 2016 12:09 PM in response to JimmyCMPIT

Hmmm ... I've never heard of a 3rd-parte "gesture" utility. If I have one, how would I know?

I did do a bit of testing with different apps, and found that some of them respond to the 3-finger tap as a "paste", while others don't. So however it works, it's not consistent. But that's similar to a lot of other operations. Thus, the usual Mac "drag and drop" works with some apps, while it totally fails with others (or sometimes makes them add something other than what I intended). I noticed the 3-finger paste first with the iTerm2 that I have installed, and a test shows that it doesn't seem to work with the original Terminal app. I do use both, and I've seen Terminal act like it'd just seen a paste when I didn't think I'd pasted anything, but I don't know how to reproduce that.

Finding that iTerm2 is one of the programs that accepts the 3-finger paste, I looked through its Settings, but didn't find any control for it. But I could have missed it, probably from not knowing what they might call it.

I also have about a dozen browsers installed, because I do a lot of web stuff and like to test for portability. I found that some of them also accept the 3-finger tap as a paste operation. But I haven't noted which ones accepted it. A quick check in a FF window shows that it doesn't notice a 3-finger tap on the touchpad. But CLT + pressing anywhere on the touchpad gets a menu that includes "paste" as an item, something that I haven't notice before in other apps. Trying it in a few other windows that accept input shows a few apps that also have that "paste" menu item, while others don't.

But I suppose OS X isn't any more consistent about such things than any other OS (that I've worked with .-).

(And I'm not sure that the 3-finger tap is what's triggering all the spurious pastes. A lot of them happen when I'm typing, and of course it's difficult to not touch the touchpad with the base of a thumb. But I only have two of those, and there's obviously no 3rd contact point, so it has to be something other than a 3-point tap that's triggering the pasting. In any case, it used to be that touchpad input was disabled while you typed on the keyboard, and I do see other evidence that typing is still recognized. For instance, the pointer usually turns off when I start typing. So the 3-finger tap thing may be a red herring.)

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