2

I have a MacBook Pro 15" i7, Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

Files won't "drop" after dragging them.

I've restarted my computer several times, and repaired disk permissions as well as verified the disk – and the results told me my MacBook Pro was fine.

What should I do? What's causing this?

8
  • What happens instead? Does it snap back? Sometimes it may stick and you have to click to drop. Does that work?
    – digitxp
    Aug 25, 2011 at 20:01
  • Where are you actually trying to drag/drop files from/to?
    – slhck
    Aug 25, 2011 at 20:25
  • Double click to drop if you have Drag Lock on.
    – Vervious
    Aug 26, 2011 at 1:07
  • thanks guys. what happened was, my computer worked fine before, i don't have drag lock on, so it should automatically drop to another folder like if i dragged from my desktop to photos. it didn't drop. it was stuck moving around with the cursor. when i press esc, it wouldn't snap back to the desktop.
    – Laurice
    Aug 26, 2011 at 6:48
  • So you use the trackpad only? How do you perform the drag then? Do you have "dragging" enabled (i.e. double-click, then drag) or do you click the pad and drag? Or is your problem solved?
    – slhck
    Aug 26, 2011 at 7:15

3 Answers 3

3

An anonymous user posted the following as a suggested edit to one of the answers to this question:

This seems to be related to Avatron's Air Display, see this post.

From the linked web page:

Here’s the current status: IF you’re running Lion AND if you have an NVIDIA 9400M/9600M chipset AND you have a third-party video driver installed, THEN you will not be able to release the mouse button while drag-dropping something.

Well, it turns out that the drag-drop bug only manifests itself if you haven’t done a Wake From Sleep since your last Log In or Restart. So there’s a workaround: After each Log In or Restart, close your MacBook Pro, wait for it to sleep, and then open it again to wake it. It’s a little bit of a pain, but it’s there as a workaround if you want to use Air Display on one of these Macs.

2

That happens to me in Lion after I boot my computer.

My solution: put it to sleep and wake it and everything will be ok

1
  • Against all my expectations, this actually works reliably to solve the issue. And all this time, I've been rebooting my entire machine (I never use ‘sleep.’) So: As of El Capitan, this is still a fix for this strange, elusive, and ever-present OS X bug … at least for me. Oct 27, 2015 at 6:10
1

Open System Preferences » Trackpad and make sure you don't have Drag Lock set there.

5
  • Is there even a difference between Drag Lock activated and the default setting? Couldn't spot any.
    – slhck
    Aug 25, 2011 at 21:20
  • @slhck Just watch the video. You can remove your fingers while dragging. It's gone on Lion, so I cannot experiment myself /// Totally off topic: May I send you an SU blog post draft by email for feedback?
    – Daniel Beck
    Aug 25, 2011 at 21:28
  • Ah, so there's no automatic deactivation anymore. /// Why yes, I'll read through it some time tomorrow or over the weekend!
    – slhck
    Aug 25, 2011 at 21:32
  • 1
    @Daniel Beck the drag lock setting is actually still there in lion, albeit in the Universal Access section buried underneath 2 layers of settings.
    – Vervious
    Aug 26, 2011 at 1:08
  • I don't have drag lock selected. It's probably something with my trackpad? thanks for the help though.
    – Laurice
    Aug 26, 2011 at 6:49

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .