MacOS – How to get the trackpad (force touch) to recognise a click right after a scroll

macostrackpad

I use CAD software and a really common action is to zoom out (two finger scroll) followed by a click and drag to pan around the document.

On the new MBR pro with force touch trackpad I'm finding that if I do those operations in quick succession the click isn't recognised at all. Instead if have to do a deliberate finishing of the zoom before starting the click. As you can imagine, that's pretty frustrating when you do it all day.

I recently had my macbook stolen and was forced to upgrade from an old 2008 macbook to a new MBR pro. So I've gone from OS 10.6 to 10.10 and from the older trackpad to the new force touch one. This means I'm not sure if it's a change in the OS that I'm trying to track down or something to do with the new force touch trackpad.

I installed BetterTouchTool to see if there was anything in there that looked like it would help. It had a "live view" so I could see what the trackpad was seeing and the movements (and clicking) are all being "seen" by the software. It's just that the driver won't acknowledge the click until the scroll is done.

Any ideas of what I can do to tweak this behaviour?

Edit – try the following:

  • scroll down using two fingers on this page
  • lift one finger and apply pressure with the other to do a click
  • drag up to the top right as you're doing it to simulate a click and drag

alternatively:

  • scroll down using two fingers on this page
  • use your thumb to click and index finger to drag up to the top right

You'll see that it takes almost a second to recognise that you're trying to click. The only way to be sure of getting the click is to end the scroll before rolling into the click.

This was not a problem on the older trackpads because they had a physical button, so they knew when you had transitioned to the click. Now that it's the force system it's not distinguishing between them so well – evidently it has a delay in it before it acknowledges that you're definitely trying to click.

Best Answer

In Preferences/Accessibility/Trackpad there are additional (pre force touch) trackpad options such as 3 finger drag. I don't use CAD so cannot say if the exact scenario can be addressed, but it is worth a look.