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Tap-to-click issues on B9 and 10 (and now Monterey release)
- Thread starter Cozmosis
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I read a comment on the Apple discussion forums on that thread talking about this subject that said when they enabled "Silent Clicking" it didn't actually silence it. Seems as though Apple really needs to fix a bunch of trackpad issues.
This is probably completely irrelevant to the topic, but I have Big Sur 11.6.1 and out of curiosity, I looked at System Preferences > Trackpad, and to my surprise, Tap to click is unchecked yet I've always tapped to click and it works fine. Needless to say, I'm not changing that setting, but it's perplexing. ?
There are many threads on Reddit about this problem. Post away there – it needs fixin' fast.
I saw a post (I forget where) in which the person had contacted Apple Support, got it elevated to the point where they were going to run some diagnostics to try and capture where the missing tap had run off to. Never saw any more on it though.
I'm about to do some research on a few methods of my own to do this, even if I have to write something myself (ah, to the good old days where I could set a trap with an emulator to capture interrupts and peruse memory on an embedded Z8000). Or, breakdown and call Apple Support. If only I could find a way to reliably reproduce the issue. So far, no luck. Sure slows things down though. I find myself waiting to see if it took it or not before tapping again, or force-clicking.
The keyboard and trackpad are HID USB devices connected through a T2 USB port. They should be interrupt driven. I suspect the events are being gobbled up by something new in Monterey (something new added between the low level events their prior destinations in Big Sur and before (and I mean this worked perfectly since tap-to-click first came out, farther back than I can remember – I'm sure > 15 years).
I reported the tap-to-click bug a month ago and it still sits there saying "open" and "similar reports: none".
Apple aren't reading them any more. They've gone back to the Catalina / iOS 13 way of working. There are many small bugs in iOS 15 and Monterey that have been there since the initial dev betas. They're not even interested in getting their new hardware working properly on these OSes.
Apple aren't reading them any more. They've gone back to the Catalina / iOS 13 way of working. There are many small bugs in iOS 15 and Monterey that have been there since the initial dev betas. They're not even interested in getting their new hardware working properly on these OSes.
I submitted a bug report on Nov. 5, and it still says no similar reports and "open." Maybe another approach is to contact Apple-centric websites and try to get them to report on this. Some of them already have, but I don't think they appreciate the widespread nature of the bug. Apple touts its trackpads as the best in the industry, but this bug makes my old Dell XPS trackpad look stellar by comparison. If I could install Big Sur, I would. But I'm stuck with Monterey since that's what came with my 16-inch M1 Pro. Very frustrating.
More information on this subject.
Clearly the issue is not universal! Today I played more than a full hour with in store 14 and 16 base models with 12.0.1 and none of them exhibited the issue. However I was unable to try to pair a Bluetooth mouse of any sorts and the software was, as expected, all standard.
Nevertheless it clearly proves the issue is not universal and many machines out there have no issues. What puzzles me more is that there is reports of full clean install with problems. I also can confirm it happened on a clean install on a 2015 MacBook Pro 15.
Here’s hopping that the bug reports launch further call for data on this matter.
Clearly the issue is not universal! Today I played more than a full hour with in store 14 and 16 base models with 12.0.1 and none of them exhibited the issue. However I was unable to try to pair a Bluetooth mouse of any sorts and the software was, as expected, all standard.
Nevertheless it clearly proves the issue is not universal and many machines out there have no issues. What puzzles me more is that there is reports of full clean install with problems. I also can confirm it happened on a clean install on a 2015 MacBook Pro 15.
Here’s hopping that the bug reports launch further call for data on this matter.
Would be nice if macrumours would write about it. I contacted them a week back.
2017 Macbook Pro (no touch bar) user here
So it seems that this issue is happening across a diverse range of hardware, with or without bluetooth (my gen1 magic trackpad produces the same unreliability issues as my onboard trackpad, but turning off bluetooth doesn't help), and it seems like laptops with the same configurations can either be affected or be entirely fine.
So, one big question: Has anybody with this issue tried a clean install, then logging in with a brand new Apple ID? Because when I installed Monterey, it imported all my configuration selections which date back years and might have some legacy options selection that don't jive well with the new OS for whatever reason. And I presume that when you buy a new M1 macbook and log in with your existing apple ID, it'll still pull your old configuration selections, possibly triggering the same sort of bug.
So if someone experiencing this issue has the time to do a fresh install and log in with a fresh Apple ID, I'd be very curious to hear if the problem persists, even with all the default configuration options.
p.s. here's an easy way to reliably diagnose this issue:
- Go to a 'click counter' site like https://www.rapidtables.com/tools/click-counter.html
- Put the cursor over the counter button, close your eyes, and count out 50 taps on the trackpad
- Open your eyes and look at the number of taps registered - it's always one or two short of 50 for me
Update: it looks like you can log in to a new installation without using an Apple ID by skipping that prompt when it appears, so that would simplify things if anyone can try this.
I did try creating a new user account, and I logged into that without signing-in with an Apple ID, but the issue existed even with the new user account.
That said, I think this is still worth trying on a clean install with a machine experiencing this issue - just make sure to avoid signing-in with an Apple ID so that no old settings are imported.
Update 2: I've tried resetting the NVRAM and SMC, yet the problem persists
So it seems that this issue is happening across a diverse range of hardware, with or without bluetooth (my gen1 magic trackpad produces the same unreliability issues as my onboard trackpad, but turning off bluetooth doesn't help), and it seems like laptops with the same configurations can either be affected or be entirely fine.
So, one big question: Has anybody with this issue tried a clean install, then logging in with a brand new Apple ID? Because when I installed Monterey, it imported all my configuration selections which date back years and might have some legacy options selection that don't jive well with the new OS for whatever reason. And I presume that when you buy a new M1 macbook and log in with your existing apple ID, it'll still pull your old configuration selections, possibly triggering the same sort of bug.
So if someone experiencing this issue has the time to do a fresh install and log in with a fresh Apple ID, I'd be very curious to hear if the problem persists, even with all the default configuration options.
p.s. here's an easy way to reliably diagnose this issue:
- Go to a 'click counter' site like https://www.rapidtables.com/tools/click-counter.html
- Put the cursor over the counter button, close your eyes, and count out 50 taps on the trackpad
- Open your eyes and look at the number of taps registered - it's always one or two short of 50 for me
Update: it looks like you can log in to a new installation without using an Apple ID by skipping that prompt when it appears, so that would simplify things if anyone can try this.
I did try creating a new user account, and I logged into that without signing-in with an Apple ID, but the issue existed even with the new user account.
That said, I think this is still worth trying on a clean install with a machine experiencing this issue - just make sure to avoid signing-in with an Apple ID so that no old settings are imported.
Update 2: I've tried resetting the NVRAM and SMC, yet the problem persists
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I tried yesterday the 14 demo on media market and also that as same problem...
Thanks for the input! The tested machines had a special partition with store demo content and a demo user. Did the machine you tried had that or a regular user?
I didn't check clearly, but it seems a regolar user with default setting ( I had to enable the tap to click in setting before the test)...and also in that machine, in trackpad settings, the demo video doesn't play
I've reached my limit with this. I'm back to BigSur and I don't even want to see Monterey any time soon.
Exactly this. In the end we want our work done and not spend time debugging OS. Hey, this was the main reason I abandoned windows 14 years ago!
I'm back to Big Sur for more than a week, best decision so far
I wish I could go back to big sur, but I had some bad luck on top of this issue with my external hard drive that I used for time machine just broke so, no more previous back up for now.
Its been 3 weeks since the initial release now and not a single update fix yet. Its the first time since I switched from Windows to Apple that I'm so disappointing with the lack of quality control from Apple for a new OS. I switched to Apple specifically for this reason.
Its been 3 weeks since the initial release now and not a single update fix yet. Its the first time since I switched from Windows to Apple that I'm so disappointing with the lack of quality control from Apple for a new OS. I switched to Apple specifically for this reason.
My magic trackpad suddeny stopped giving haptic feedback tonight BEFORE I downloaded Monterey-- which I was hoping would fix the issue but it seems that isn't likely to happen... did your external trackpad issues resolve themselves by going back to Big Sur?
in my case, yes, tap to click works fine now after I went back to Big Sur.
Not fixed in 12.1 Beta 3. Every unmarked app is a tap to click failure. It somehow feels even worse now in B3.
Edit: Yep, definitely got worse in Beta 3. Tap to click is totally unusable now on my M1 MBP.
Edit 2: I never had issues with swipe gestures until now. With Beta 3 those don't work reliably anymore as well. Swiping left or right to switch desktops repeatedly fails or causes jumps in the wrong direction.
Edit 3: Pinch to zoom also stopped working reliably. It doesn't do smooth movements anymore and often forgets about the second finger and moves the pointer instead. This really feels like one of those crappy touchpads in cheap low-budget laptops from China.
Edit: Yep, definitely got worse in Beta 3. Tap to click is totally unusable now on my M1 MBP.
Edit 2: I never had issues with swipe gestures until now. With Beta 3 those don't work reliably anymore as well. Swiping left or right to switch desktops repeatedly fails or causes jumps in the wrong direction.
Edit 3: Pinch to zoom also stopped working reliably. It doesn't do smooth movements anymore and often forgets about the second finger and moves the pointer instead. This really feels like one of those crappy touchpads in cheap low-budget laptops from China.
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