Dialogs stops working

[Raz0rEdge]

I upgraded to a Mac Studio from a Mac Mini and am running Monterrey on both of them. I'm finding a very interesting issue with my Mac Studio where after some time, dialog boxes don't take any mouse clicks.

On any application, I'll open the Save or Open dialog and I can use the keyboard to enter stuff and tab around, but I can't use the mouse to click on anything.

After a lot of experimentation, I've found that if I "Killall Dock" when this particular issue starts, the mouse clicks immediately start to work with the dialog that is still open.

Has anyone run into this issue?

 

[usagora]

This actually happened to me yesterday but resolved itself without me having to use any Terminal commands. The "Save To" dialogue could be tabbed around, etc. but mouse-clicks did not register. Tried multiple times without success, but then a few minutes later all was back to normal.

I wouldn't think the hardware would have anything to do with it, since it's a macOS issue. I was using a 2019 iMac, btw.

 

[Diskutant]

I had this a few days ago with System Preferences. No mouse click did anything but using keyboard controls worked. I could quit System Preferences and start it again and mouse clicks still wouldn't do anything. Every other app worked fine. I fixed it by restarting the Mac Studio.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

This actually happened to me yesterday but resolved itself without me having to use any Terminal commands. The "Save To" dialogue could be tabbed around, etc. but mouse-clicks did not register. Tried multiple times without success, but then a few minutes later all was back to normal.

I wouldn't think the hardware would have anything to do with it, since it's a macOS issue. I was using a 2019 iMac, btw.

The odd thing is that this never happens on my 2019 MBP and 2018 Mac Mini, however, it happens a lot on the Mac Studio. All of the Macs are running the latest iteration of Monterrey. At least, I know how to fix it without restarting the machine, but no amount of waiting makes it work.

Initially when it did happen, I would click around a bunch and I'd get one click acknowledged once in a while.

I had this a few days ago with System Preferences. No mouse click did anything but using keyboard controls worked. I could quit System Preferences and start it again and mouse clicks still wouldn't do anything. Every other app worked fine. I fixed it by restarting the Mac Studio.

Yup, when the save dialog stops working, so does the Sys Prefs dialogs. Restart definitely works, but so does restarting Dock, so I'm apt to blame something goofy with Dock.

On top of that, I didn't migrate anything from my previous Macs on this Mac Studio, it was setup with what came installed on it.

If it persists for long, I might try a clean re-install and see if that resolves it.

 

[MilaM]

Had the same problem three days ago on an iMac 18,3 (macOS 12.5.1) and then again on an iMac 17,1 (macOS 12.5.1) again today. Only way to get out was to restart the Mac using the power button. Never happened to me before 🤷‍♂️. This is a really strange bug.

 

[MilaM]

but so does restarting Dock, so I'm apt to blame something goofy with Dock.

How do you restart the Dock?

I think I tried restarting the Finder with CMD-Option-ESC. If I remember correctly that did not solve the mouse issue.