Enabling both trackpad Drag Lock and 3 Finger Drag at once?

Question

OSX has two methods of dragging with the track pad, “drag lock” (double tap then drag until you tap to release) and “three finger drag” where you touch three fingers and drag until you release. The problem is, it forces you to select one or the other.

Is there any way I can manually turn both options on at the same time?

The reason this is useful is because 3 Finger Drag is great for short quick drags, but for longer drags you often run out of room on the trackpad. Drag Lock is good for long drags but is quite slow when you have a bunch of drags because you have to double tap into and tap out of the drag lock each time. It’d be really great to have both at once.

Answer 1

On OS X El Capitan 10.11.1, the following terminal commands seem to solve it for me on the Magic Trackpad (on the built in trackpad I can operate only one dragging mechanic at a time) :

# Enable "tap-and-a-half" to drag.
defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad Dragging -int 1
defaults write com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad Dragging -int 1


# Enable 3-finger drag. (Moving with 3 fingers in any window "chrome" moves the window.)
defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad TrackpadThreeFingerDrag -bool true
defaults write com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad TrackpadThreeFingerDrag -bool true

source: https://github.com/boochtek/mac_config/blob/master/trackpad.sh

Update: dug up a bit more and found the "tap behavior" mouse defaults entry, which requires the "2" preset in order to get "tap to drag" on the built in trackpad

defaults -currentHost write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.mouse.tapBehavior -int 2
defaults write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.mouse.tapBehavior -int 2

Answer 2

I went directly to the preference file for the trackpad to see if one could set both the Three Finger Dragging flag and the Dragging flag (with or without setting the DragLock flag) but though I could set both and the new values remained stable I was not able to get both Three Finger Dragging and Double Tap Dragging to function at the same time. (Actually, there are two preference files: one for the Apple Bluetooth Multitouch Trackpad and one for the Apple Multitouch Trackpad and I tested this with both just in case.) So I believe the answer is No, it can't be done.

Unless my mind is going I'm pretty sure that it was possible to set both types of dragging in an earlier version of OS X and it felt like something had changed but I couldn't say exactly what until I saw this question. Unless there was a conflict that Apple found between the various Three Finger settings or they have a plan for some new function that would require such a change I don't know why this ability would be removed. The preference files are capable of allowing the various combinations of dragging by using separate flags. The way it now exists allows the flags to be set inconsistently with how OS X performs dragging but it's only one part of that preference file that is badly designed; the whole set of prefs looks like they were thrown together without considering an overall methodology and makes the chance of introducing problems as changes are made over time more likely to occur. And having both ways, as the OP said, is convenient at times.

Answer 3

This got it working for me.

1. Set "TrackpadThreeFingerDrag"=YES and also "Dragging"=YES in "com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad.plist" inside "~/Library/Preferences".
2. Repair Permissions with Disk Utility
3. Reboot

Answer 4

I needed to disable it on a client's Mac and there were some errors doing it in the GUI interface, so I wrote this in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad TrackpadThreeFingerDrag -bool false
defaults write com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad TrackpadThreeFingerDrag -bool false

It worked.

Answer 5

It looks like the options may have changed for High Sierra (10.13.x):

% defaults read com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad 
{
    ActuateDetents = 1;
    Clicking = 1;
    DragLock = 0;
    Dragging = 0;
    FirstClickThreshold = 1;
    ForceSuppressed = 0;
    SecondClickThreshold = 1;
    TrackpadCornerSecondaryClick = 0;
    TrackpadFiveFingerPinchGesture = 0;
    TrackpadFourFingerHorizSwipeGesture = 0;
    TrackpadFourFingerPinchGesture = 0;
    TrackpadFourFingerVertSwipeGesture = 0;
    TrackpadHandResting = 1;
    TrackpadHorizScroll = 1;
    TrackpadMomentumScroll = 1;
    TrackpadPinch = 1;
    TrackpadRightClick = 1;
    TrackpadRotate = 1;
    TrackpadScroll = 1;
    TrackpadThreeFingerDrag = 1;
    TrackpadThreeFingerHorizSwipeGesture = 0;
    TrackpadThreeFingerTapGesture = 0;
    TrackpadThreeFingerVertSwipeGesture = 0;
    TrackpadTwoFingerDoubleTapGesture = 0;
    TrackpadTwoFingerFromRightEdgeSwipeGesture = 0;
    USBMouseStopsTrackpad = 0;
    UserPreferences = 1;
    version = 12;
}

I think setting DragLock and TrackpadThreeFingerDrag both to 1 will probably get the job done, though I don't feel like restarting my computer right now to test it. =)

Answer 6

Open Terminal.app and execute the following command-lines one by one:

defaults write com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad DragLock -bool true

defaults write com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad TrackpadThreeFingerDrag -bool true