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A few days ago, I don't know what happened, possibly nothing but my 13" MacBook Pro trackpad started acting weird. Did I spill water? Food? Shook it? Pressured it? Any of these might have happened, but nothing out of the ordinary that caught my attention.

So, the trackpad started moving around randomly by itself; sometimes clicking around. It was dangerous so I disabled the trackpad from here: enter image description here

I've tried:

  • Mac restart
  • SMC reset
  • PRAM reset
  • Fontnuke
  • Clearing some settings and caches
  • Messing with the preferences

Nothing worked to fix it. Even my mouse (Logitech G500) was messed up, the left button is not clicking and movement kind of clunky.

Interestingly when I login with my guest user account, my mouse works fine until I start using the trackpad. After using trackpad my mouse gets messed up again.

Also after I disable the trackpad while mouse is was connected and after that operation I restart my Mac and do a NVRAM reset, my mouse works perfectly fine. As long as I don't disconnect my mouse accidently and do something on the trackpad.

After 2 days my trackpad still has issues but it is not as crazy as it used to be. Now, it doesn't run around randomly clicking around, but I cannot control it properly either. Trying to make a shape with the trackpad is very difficult because it starts jumping around. It's also still messing with my mouse, but this time instead of the left button it started messing up the right button of the mouse. Why?

It seems like this is a software problem and how can I fix it?

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  • Try booting into safe mode and see if the problem still occurs.
    – JMY1000
    Jun 17, 2016 at 13:34
  • Yes it still occurs
    – Esqarrouth
    Jun 17, 2016 at 14:19
  • This happens to my 2012 Macbook Pro Retina if the touchpad gets a bit wet. I normally cannot do anything about it other than close the lid and give it time to sort itself out.
    – Omar
    Jun 18, 2016 at 12:24
  • Well 3 days passed and it hasn't sorted itself out yet. It got a lot better, if it was 100x unusable at the start it is now 10x unusable. What should I do, just wait a few more days? I'm using it btw
    – Esqarrouth
    Jun 18, 2016 at 13:55

4 Answers 4

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It's probably moisture.

I experiencing something similar after being caught in the rain with my MacBook Pro. Working outside because the weather was nice, I got caught in a slight drizzle of rain. I immediately shut the lid and ran inside.

It didn't get wet enough to cause damage, but somehow wet enough to mess with the clicking function of the trackpad; it would sometimes "lock" in the clicked position, not register clicks, or click erratically.

What I did was put my MacBook Pro in a Zip-Loc bag with several desiccant (silica gel) packets and leave it overnight.

enter image description here

In the mid-morning, I took it out of the Zip-Loc and the trackpad was working again.

I save these packets in a jar; they come in the packaging of products I buy. I will throw some in my camera bag where I keep my lenses and I will put a few in my briefcase where I keep my laptop.

If you save them, they're free, but they are also extremely inexpensive on Amazon or eBay if you don't have any available and are in dire need.

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Update: After a week it kind of got fixed by itself. Its working fine now, I don't know the reason.

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  • By your description, it didn't sound at all like a software problem, it sounded as though the hardware of your trackpad got messed up. Maybe the surface got dirty, maybe something got wet inside of the mechanism. Good that it sorted itself out.
    – kal-al
    Jul 5, 2016 at 5:48
  • I thought it was hardware at first, but the fact that it messed up my external mouse until I changed a setting made me think it was a software bug. In any case, hope it will be sorted out for others in the future aswell
    – Esqarrouth
    Jul 5, 2016 at 13:31
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Don't Worry you can fix it in just few minutes by following these steps. Mostly this problem is caused by humidity.

  1. Turn off your macbook.
  2. Bring your macbook in Sunlight and leave it there for about 20 minutes.
  3. Turn on your macbook and enjoy.

If there is no sunlight in your country you can use the hair dryer(1 minute only) for this purpose. Warning ! you must dry only your trackpad using hair dryer.

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I was on the phone with Apple and they had me clean my tracking pad with a dust free cloth and water. Boom it was fixed immediately.

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