Touchpad inadvertently clicking

impulse462 said:

Hello all,

I've had an i5 Sandy Bridge MacBook Air 13" since last July (when it was released) and it's worked flawlessly.

However, a few days ago, I started noticing that my touchpad would register a click before I physically clicked the pad. For example, if I apply enough pressure on the touchpad with my finger, but not enough for it to move down (making a click noise) a click will still register in OS X. Yes, I have checked and rechecked the touchpad settings and "tap to click" is turned off.

Has anyone else had this problem? I'm going to guess that this a hardware problem, but my computer hasn't been through any trauma. Any feedback is appreciated.

Click to expand...

Had this same thing recently. I took it to my local Apple Store, they tested it and cleaned the trackpad, and said it was working normally. It seemed fine for a couple of weeks, but I noticed it acting wierdly last night. I'll likely take it back it.

Your battery may be swelling. That will usually cause trackpad wonkiness.

A trip to the Apple Store is definitely in order.

Mine is getting worse. I'll be heading into the Apple Store tomorrow to hopefully have the trackpad replaced. I finally figured out exactly what it is doing - tell me if yours is the same.

Whats happening is that the trackpad is treating finger LIFTED from the trackpad as a click. So if I put my finger on the trackpad, and then slide to move the cursor, when I lift my finger, it is registering as a click (which obviously isn't correct). It also does this when I use 2 fingers - if I bring up a web page in Safari, use 2 fingers to scroll down the page, and then lift the 2 fingers off the trackpad, it registers as a click. Very strange, but at least it is a repeatable problem I can demonstrate at the Genius Bar.

I was told to reinstall Lion at the Apple Store - did that - still acting weird, so they are now replacing the trackpad. Hopefully that fixes it.

The click on the macbook's is adjustable from underneeth and providing you get a decent service they will adjust it for you.

Yeah - this wasn't an issue with the click - it was incorrectly registering clicks (I have tap to click turned on).

impulse462 said:

Hello all,

I've had an i5 Sandy Bridge MacBook Air 13" since last July (when it was released) and it's worked flawlessly.

However, a few days ago, I started noticing that my touchpad would register a click before I physically clicked the pad. For example, if I apply enough pressure on the touchpad with my finger, but not enough for it to move down (making a click noise) a click will still register in OS X. Yes, I have checked and rechecked the touchpad settings and "tap to click" is turned off.

Has anyone else had this problem? I'm going to guess that this a hardware problem, but my computer hasn't been through any trauma. Any feedback is appreciated.

Click to expand...

I had this problem with my Macbook Air. It was pretty hard to reproduce the problem intentionally (but eventually I figured out that I could), but amazingly I would get a great number of spurious trackpad clicks during regular use, causing me many frustrations (for example, accidentally picking up files or folders and dropping them into other random folders in a matter of a split second, and not knowing where the file / folder went).

I could reproduce the problem by holding a finger on the bottom edge or one of the two corners, then *very gradually* increasing pressure with the pointer hovering over a folder. Eventually, I found that I could select the folder without actually physically "clicking" the trackpad if I released the pressure just as the folder was selected, but before the trackpad clicked. Quite a balancing act and not very easy to do.

I had to make three visits to the Apple Store before I could figure out how reproduce the problem intentionally for them so they could see what happened.

The genius who fixed it, said there are some adjustment screws on the trackpad (accessible from the inside), that can be used to adjust the force required to click the pad. He thought adjusting these might fix the problem, but opted instead to just replace the trackpad.

Anyone else who has this problem that is not still under warranty, you can always try adjusting the screws or buying yourself a new trackpad for not too much money online, and replace it yourself as well. For example:

http://www.ifixit.com/MacBook-Parts/MacBook-Air-13-Inch-Mid-2011-Trackpad/IF188-073 (used part)

Just got my unit back from Apple. They replaced the trackpad and the inadvertent clicking is gone, so it seems to have been an issue with the hardware.