Drag and Drop Lock

I have a problem where when I reboot my machine - drag and drop stops working. That is - I can select, drag, but drop never works. I am running the latest version of Lion - and my machine was restored from backup so some old stuff may be interfering. I have several programs that may be causing issues - Better Touch Tool, Zooom2, Better Snap Tool, Quicksilver, Total Finder, DefaultFolderX all mess with Finder/GUI. I tried turning everything off, removing stuff from startup folders - but none of that worked.

I found a really weird gesture that brings drag and drop back - Single click, 2 finger click, 3 finger click - seems to bring back drag and drop without lock for me.

Sticky Drag and Drop

Today I booted my MacBook Pro - OS 10.7.2, 2.2 Ghz Intel Core i7, 4 GB, 1333 MHz DDR 3 machine and I've tried dragging and dropping images into a Mail.app message. The image drags and then "sticks" - it won't drop - no matter what I do. I'm using a Microsoft mouse. The mouse button isn't sticky or anything practical like that. The trackpad is relatively clean. This just started happening. I installed the latest Mac OS X updates and this has never happened before today. Again - drap - and the file "sticks" and will not release even if I press the Esc key. If I try putting the file back into the Finder window that doesn't solve the problem. I've also tried restarting the Finder - that solved it finally - I was able to release the file. So I guess the Finder session had some memory leak errors. Anyone else have this problem?

IvanLasston said:

I have a problem where when I reboot my machine - drag and drop stops working. That is - I can select, drag, but drop never works. I am running the latest version of Lion - and my machine was restored from backup so some old stuff may be interfering. I have several programs that may be causing issues - Better Touch Tool, Zooom2, Better Snap Tool, Quicksilver, Total Finder, DefaultFolderX all mess with Finder/GUI. I tried turning everything off, removing stuff from startup folders - but none of that worked.

I found a really weird gesture that brings drag and drop back - Single click, 2 finger click, 3 finger click - seems to bring back drag and drop without lock for me.

Click to expand...

Nothing special is needed for drag and drop with a gesture. There's a hidden trackpad preference that will enable drag with or without drag lock. Go into preferences>Universal Acess>Magic Trackpad and mouse preferences> Trackpad then tick the dragging box and then either choose with or without drag lock. This enables the ol' one finger double tap/hold drag gesture.

This then frees up the three finger window drag gesture, which you can then use for something else. I use it to navigate back and forth instead of using arrows in say.. Finder, or System Preferences etc.

Doug

I know about all that Doug - and I actually went through every gesture inside system preferences (toggled all off/on one by one). I deleted all the programs that I mentioned. I cleaned out all my startup folders in /Library and ~/Library, and I messed with all the universal access settings and it was still locking on drag. I even made a new user and made sure that his startup was clean. I do't know what causes this lock but going through the click progression of left button click, right button click, middle mouse button click seems to free up something on my system.

10.7.5 still has this issue

IvanLasston said:

I know about all that Doug - and I actually went through every gesture inside system preferences (toggled all off/on one by one). I deleted all the programs that I mentioned. I cleaned out all my startup folders in /Library and ~/Library, and I messed with all the universal access settings and it was still locking on drag. I even made a new user and made sure that his startup was clean. I do't know what causes this lock but going through the click progression of left button click, right button click, middle mouse button click seems to free up something on my system.

Click to expand...

I've had this same issue sense upgrading to 10.7.4, I've tested in the same way, a Safeboot is the only mode that removes this drag-lock issue. I have similar extra extensions, however they are all installed as user level, but creating a new user still has the problems.

Have you had any success in finding the culprit?

I've never figured out what exactly caused it. I have upgraded to Mountain Lion and did a restore of my Time Machine backup - and it seems to have gone away. As I said in my previous post - the only thing that seems to work for me - is to cycle through left, right, middle clicks - and at some point something frees up.

As you said - I tried even a new user and it was still locking as well - even though all my apps were user level apps.

Hi Ivan, after doing further searches on different keywords I found the following article that said if you put your machine to sleep, then wake it up, the problem would be resolved. Funny, it fixed mine. This isn't the case if I just put the lid down to put it to sleep, I had to specifically Apple > Sleep, then wake it up and the drag-drop works as expected. I don't know why, but it is an okay work around for me until I'm willing to upgrade.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15669969#15669969

Thanks for your response.