MBP (2012) trackpad problem

Hi everyone,

A few weeks ago my trackpad stated acting extremely erratic. The cursor moves across the screen by itself, selects things, highlights things, etc. It got so bad I had to plug in a USB mouse.

I just downloaded BetterTouchTool and used the live feature to see what my trackpad was doing while I had my USB mouse plugged in. This is the result:



Those white circles indicate that the trackpad thinks my fingers are placed there, but they're not. The "ghost" circles always appear near the middle of the trackpad.

Does this indicate a problem with the trackpad itself, or a swollen battery?

bermudalocket said:

Does this indicate a problem with the trackpad itself, or a swollen battery?

Click to expand...

You "hit the nail on the head" (possibly). A swollen battery is usually one of the first things I think of.

- Nick

Try giving us a few helpful hints like Mac model, year, OS X version etc…

And yes a swollen battery can goof thing up if it's swollen. Is it removable to test? I'm guessing not.


And boy, it's hard to beat Nick when posting I see.

MBP 13-inch mid-2012 running OSX Yosemite 10.10

Battery is inside the case. Waiting on tools to arrive so I can open this puppy up.

EDIT: Just realized I posted this in the iPod subforum. Sorry, it's been a long day.

bermudalocket said:

MBP 13-inch mid-2012 running OSX Yosemite 10.10

Battery is inside the case. Waiting on tools to arrive so I can open this puppy up.

Click to expand...

Can we assuming nothing happened to this computer physically?? Such as it got dropped, serious bump, liquid spill, etc.??

bermudalocket said:

EDIT: Just realized I posted this in the iPod subforum. Sorry, it's been a long day.

Click to expand...

No problem...thread move to better area.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Can we assuming nothing happened to this computer physically?? Such as it got dropped, serious bump, liquid spill, etc.??



No problem...thread move to better area.

- Nick

Click to expand...

Hm... I care for this thing like a child, so it has definitely never been dropped, bumped, slammed, tossed, etc. However, two potentially relevant things have happened in the last few weeks:

1. I found out that my boyfriend, when he was taking my laptop off the desk to put his on it, was putting it on the floor, on its side, leaned up against the desk (so, say, the CD drive was against the floor while the opposite end with the inputs was against the desk).

2. My niece dropped some food on the trackpad. It was a mushy stew that was limited to the surface of the trackpad. I was pretty sure nothing got into the cracks around the edge. The spill was tiny and I cleaned it up carefully.

bermudalocket said:

2. My niece dropped some food on the trackpad. It was a mushy stew that was limited to the surface of the trackpad. I was pretty sure nothing got into the cracks around the edge. The spill was tiny and I cleaned it up carefully.

Click to expand...

I'm not saying that this caused the current problem. But we have had folks with trackpad problems mentioning that they spilled only 1 or 2 drops of liquid on a trackpad…and trackpad problems resulted.

So who knows if the "stew spill" initiated anything.

- Nick