Three-finger tap lookup function is still not working!

Okay, I was having this trouble too.

Every time I tried to look something up, the following message would pop up instead:

So, I was finally able to find a solution to the problem.

Just go to "Spotlight" from your System Preferences, and uncheck the box that says "Allow Spotlight Suggestions in Look up"

Hope this helps! 🙂

Hello !

Open dictionary app through spotlight , press command and comma to open preferences , select the desired dictionary box a bar will start downloading in the bottom , let it be completed .

You can select a word and tap with three fingers on it to show the meaning in that dictionary .

Thanks McLawrence! I closed all the Safari tabs, quit it and restarted it and found that three finger lookup worked again.

Did you tested in a new user account , run safe mode and avoid using cleaners , anti virus , any unwanted apps , opening too many apps at a time should be avoided .

The problem is, that this does not work. It worked sometime ago and works in many applications. I think settings are not the problem here. Empirically, I would say it breaks if too many tabs are open in Safari, in my case (>>100).

I suspect having "too many open tabs/windows/apps" is causing three finger lookup to stop working. If that is the case, then it's a bug, but I don't know if it consistently happens across computers. Rebooting only solves the problem for a few days for me. I'm not excessively using RAM – my memory pressure is always green.

Enable "Tap to click', the third one at the bottom and test.

I have a similar problem. Three finger tap works after reboot, but stops working after some time.

There are definitely some bugs here. My panel looked exactly like yours, with tap to click not checked, but I tap to click all the time. After toggling the switch, tap to click behaves as it should, and I cross my fingers that three finger tap will stop malfunctioning at random.

See this article Spotlight preferences - Apple Support

For me the lookup works only in some applications: In Mail, iBooks, System Preferences and Notes the Look up works. However, I cannot use it in Safari to see definition of words or preview links in this small pop-up window. Does anyone experience this issue?

Same here after updating High Sierra

Yes! Very annoying too.

I'm still having this exact same issue. With no resolve.

Thanks! This fixed it for me.