Drag & Drop Not Working in Mac OS X? Simple Troubleshooting Tips
1: Forcibly Restart the Mac Finder
If drag and drop is failing in file system interactions, often the easiest solution is to simply restarting the Finder, which is quite easy:
- Hit Command+Option+Escape to bring up the “Force Quit” menu
- Choose “Finder” from the list and click on ‘Relaunch’ to quit and re-open the Finder app
- Close the Force Quit menu
Try using drag and drop again, does it work? It should work fine now, but if it doesn’t we have a few other troubleshooting trick…
2: Reboot the Computer
Rebooting often works to resolve drag and drop issues when restarting the Finder has failed. This is particularly true if you’re one of us who basically never reboots their Mac.
3: Trash Related plist Files & Reboot
If you have already forced the Finder to relaunch and rebooted the Mac but you’re still experiencing issues with dragging and dropping, it’s quite likely the problem comes down to a preference file. Thus, we’ll trash the preferences and start anew, which is an effective technique for troubleshooting strange behavior for a Mac mouse and trackpad, and then reboot the Mac again.
You’ll be deleting some user level preference files here, it’s a good idea to complete a back up of the Mac first just in case you break something:
- From the Mac OS Finder, hit Command+Shift+G to bring up the ever useful “Go To Folder” screen, specifying ~/Library/Preferences/ as the destination and click Go
- Locate the following plist file(s) from the user Library Preferences folder:
- Delete those preference files and reboot the Mac again
Once again, try using drag and drop where you were experiencing the original failures in Mac OS X, it should work just fine at this point.
Keep in mind that if you trash preference files you will lose any customizations you had set for those devices, so in this case you may lose a customization to tracking speed, force touch, mouse clicks, and whatever else you adjusted for a mouse or trackpad.
4: Disable Force Click and Haptic Feedback for Trackpads
If you use a trackpad or a Mac laptop, some users have found the force click and haptic feedback mechanism interferes with the drag and drop capability of Mac OS, particularly with certain apps.
- Go to the Apple menu and to System Preferences
- Choose “Trackpad”
- Uncheck the setting for “Force Click and haptic feedback”
Often the haptic feedback / force click issue with drag and drop manifests as when you are attempting to drag and drop something with the trackpad, you feel a strange delayed double-click sensation and the item is then unselected or the action stops.
Did one of these solutions work for you? Do you have another solution or fix for when drag and drop stops working in Mac OS X? Let us know in the comments!
Reference: Click Here
