Three finger drag gesture via new MacBook Pro’s trackpad acting up for some users

13 inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar iFixit teardown 003

Three finger drag, a productivity-boosting multi-touch trackpad gesture in macOS, isn’t working properly for some owners of Apple’s new MacBook Pro. Both 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros have larger trackpads than their predecessors, but for many people the gesture doesn’t work at all.

For others, three finger drag works only intermittently or performs erroneously when used in one of the sides of the new MacBook Pro’s Force Touch trackpad.

Three finger drag lets you move any window around: first move the pointer to a window’s title bar, then tap and drag with three fingers on the trackpad simultaneously.

For some owners of the new Pro, it doesn’t work in the upper left side of the trackpad. Others have reported similar hiccups, but along all four edges of the trackpad.

TUTORIAL: how to enable three finger drag gesture on your Mac

To enable the three finger drag gesture on your Mac, go to System Preferences → Accessibility → Mouse & Trackpad → Trackpad Options, then tick the box next to “Enable dragging” and choose “three finger drag” from the popup menu.

Three Finger Drag OS X El Capitan

The 15-inch MacBook Pro has twice the surface area of its predecessor.

It’s almost as large in size as the iPad mini. iFixit’s teardown analysis of the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar has revealed that the notebook uses an extra touch controller from Broadcom to handle finger input on that massive glass area.

15 inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar iFixit teardown 003

It’s possible that the reported issues stem from the enlarged trackpads.

Adding a second touch controller to digitize the huge trackpad might be causing issues with interpreting complex gesture like a three finger drag.

Other factors that could be at play here include a bug in macOS, problems with built-in palm rejection and even a hardware failure, to mention but a few.

My money is on palm rejection software issues.

Did you buy the new MacBook Pro?

If so, are yu plagued with these three finger drag issues?

We’d like to know so please share your experience regarding the new MacBook Pro’s trackpad with fellow readers by posting a comment below.

Source: Apple Support Communities, MacRumors