Drag & Drop not working; mac Bluetooth hardware problem, macOS issue, or both?

Sounds like you have useful diagnostic information, so maybe you should file a bug giving all your information

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Bob, I had a problem very similar to that with an Apple Wireless Mouse (model number A1197 if that matters to you) and an older iMac. Dragging in general was inconsistent on the iMac but was reliable when I paired it with a MacBook Pro. I did not happen to try dragging a text selection specifically, but other dragging problems were evident. For example, dragging an icon onto a folder usually did not open that folder, no matter how long I held that icon over the folder. That seems very similar to the drag and drop behavior you are encountering.

Besides the fact the AWM was old and worn, there were too many variables to account for to directly implicate a cause. I replaced it with a Magic Mouse. Problem solved.

-running Alsoft’s DiskWarrior.

Don't use such things. Disk "Warrior" may be useful for data recovery, after some irrecoverable data loss has already occurred. It is not capable of preventing eventual hard disk drive failure. It is more likely to accelerate it. If you want your Mac to last don't use it.

Bob Mayo wrote:

Weird. Any suggestions or tips? If it’s a hardware issue with the mouse, why would it work in some apps and not in others?

FWIW, I managed to get drag and drop working in Chrome and Safari with a Magic Mouse, sometimes. It is very intermittent. No idea why other than they both use webkit.

Hello Bob - I too am having the same problem with trying to drag selected content with my Apple Wireless Mouse, and it DOES seems to be some sort of mouse-app combinations causing the problems.

I cannot select content, and then click on it and drag using Chrome. As soon as I click on the selected content, the selection immediately disappears. However, if I try selecting content and click-drag in another app, Like Sublime Text, it works the way it's always worked in every app, for prior versions of the Mac OS. The same working/non-working results apply when I pair my Apple Wireless Mouse with my MacBook Air.

HOWEVER, on both my iMac and MacBook Air, if I repeated select text in Chrome, and try over and over to click and drag it, maybe once in 10 or 15 times, it DOES work.

(I HAD thought my mouse was going bad and needed to be replaced even though it's only 3 years old. However, once I checked out the results in multiple apps, I realized it's NOT the mouse. It seems to be unique mouse-app combinations.)

I wanted to post not because I have any special suggestions for a solution or work-around, but because I want to validate that this IS a problem for at least one other user.

I have the same problem, but it a different allotment of apps with different behaviors. I too noticed the problem after upgrading to Sierra. I too only experience the issue on my iMac (I tried a Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air in addition to the iMac).

Of the apps you listed in which drag and drop doesn't work, drag and drop works for me in Safari, Apple Mail (but I don't have Chrome).

Of the apps you listing in which drag and drop does work, drag and drop doesn't work for me in TextEdit. All the others work.

In other words, drag and drop of text doesn't work for me only in Text Edit and Preview on my iMac only since Sierra upgrade.

I haven't tried any of the trouble-shooting you've done other than restart the computer. The 2 apps where I use drag and drop of text the most is Text Edit and Terminal. Luckily, Terminal still works.

And... I hope that this issue wasn't created by their attempt to fix a bug I submitted. Prior to Sierra, I reported a bug where (I think specifically in Mail, but possibly other apps - I know some apps worked correctly) if you dragged text, the text would paste where you dropped it, but would not cut from where you dragged it from. I also reported this bug related to selecting text via triple-click.

Interestingly, of the 2 apps in which drag & drop of text is not working for me (Preview and Text Edit), the erroneous behavior is different. In Preview, attempts to drag the text does not change the selected text. The text selected before the attempt to drag and drop remains selected and doesn't change. In Text Edit, a new selection is made corresponding to where I click and drag. The length of my click & hold before the drag makes no difference in these behaviors. I also noticed, but didn't note down the app, that in some apps, although drag and drop worked, the cursor changed from text selection to an arrow while in other apps, the cursore remained the text selection cursor throughout the entire drag and drop process.

I hope I haven't confused the situation, but I suspect that both of our drag and drop issues on iMacs since Sierra upgrade are related. I'm running 10.12.1, BTW. have you found a fix yet?