MacOS – Trackpad tap to click malfunction

hardwaremacbook promacosmulti-touchtrackpad

I have been having issues with my trackpad lately and I believe that I have a broken trackpad sensor, but I thought I would ask here to see if it was something to do with the software instead of the hardware.

Lately my trackpad has been acting like tap to click is on even though I have disabled it. If I place my finger on the trackpad it believes that I am holding the button down even though I have not clicked. It also acts as if I am dragging windows if I place my pointer over the top bar of a program and hold my finger down, it allows me to drag the window.

Does this sound more like a worn out trackpad? Or is there somewhere in the software that has gone wrong.

Steps I have tried so far.

  1. Removing all launch agents and daemons and booting without any external drivers loading.
  2. Enabling and re-disabling tap to click in system preferences.

Hardware:

  Model Name:              MacBook Air
  Model Identifier:        MacBookAir5,2
  Processor Name:          Intel Core i5
  Processor Speed:         1.8 GHz
  Number of Processors:    1
  Total Number of Cores:   2
  L2 Cache (per Core):     256 KB
  L3 Cache:                3 MB
  Memory:                  4 GB
  Boot ROM Version:        MBA51.00EF.B02
  SMC Version (system):    2.5f9
  Serial Number (system):  C02JQESPDRVC
  Hardware UUID:           8B45B512-A976-5FB4-877F-5E2F3D448BCB

Thanks,
Skylar

Best Answer

I suggest you book an appointment with an Apple genius.

I have had a Magic trackpad for my iMac for a couple of years.

But stated to get the same issues you have around the time I installed 10.8.5 ( or one of the later updates ) An additional issues was in any app that text could be selected the track pad would do so randomly and of it's own accord.

I thought it could be be the software and tried all manner of things. Killing the plist included.

But the problem persisted into my install of 10.9.

I finally took it to a genius two weeks ago who agreed the issue was most likely hardware.

They replaced the Magic trackpad with a new one and I have not had any problems since.

So I think to save yourself some time and frustration book an appointment. Also because it is a trackpad on a MacBook Air they should be able to run proper diagnostics and they should be able to sort it one way or other.

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