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Both my macs have been having this issue with the latest releases of MacOS:

  • Quick Look stops working randomly and Finder needs to be relaunched.
  • Pinch-to-zoom feature stops working with the trackpad (external or integrated) and I need to go to settings > trackpad > scroll & zoom and re-enable it.

I made a Quick Action using Automator that when I click a keyboard shortcut, it will restart the Finder via Terminal.

I'm using killall Finder and it works great.

Then, I was trying to add a command to restart the P-T-Z functionality as well, but I can't find it.

After doing research online, I tried the following options with no luck:

killall Dock

(saw it somewhere saying that it would do the trick)

defaults write com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad USBMouseStopsTrackpad 1 defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad USBMouseStopsTrackpad 1 defaults write com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad USBMouseStopsTrackpad 0 defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad USBMouseStopsTrackpad 0

(supposedly restarts the trackpad, but didn't work)

Does anybody know what the right command would be to achieve this goal?

Thanks!

Edit: I want to clarify that I've also been doing research on the bugs per se. Trying to find the root problem, but I had no luck with that either.

It's been happening to both my old MBP and my new iMac. So I think that these are definitely bugs with the OS.

I've read about other users having the same issues, and the common solution is just to manually restart Finder or the Zoom gesture. So that's why I'm looking for a solution that will make this manual process less annoying while Apple works on fixing them.

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  • you could find out if the problem is with your user settings or the system as a whole by creating a new user and testing it out under the test/temporary user login. That might narrow it down a bit... Commented Apr 8, 2022 at 19:10

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I also have this problem, as have other people, pretty sure its a known bug at this point. I've noticed it particularly when using Powerpoint pinch to zoom, and only after the latest update. Using Shortcuts (introduced in Monterrey) I wrote up this AppleScript which checks and unchecks the box. Then in the Shortcut details you can pin it to menu bar. Confirmed this works on Monterrey 12.4.

on run {input, parameters} tell application "System Preferences" if it is running then quit delay 0.2 end if end tell tell application "System Preferences" to reveal pane id "com.apple.preference.trackpad" tell application "System Events" tell front window of application process "System Preferences" repeat until (exists checkbox 2 of tab group 1) delay 0.01 end repeat click checkbox 2 of tab group 1 click checkbox 2 of tab group 1 end tell end tell quit application "System Preferences" return input end run

Screenshot snippet of Reset Pinch Zoom shortcut pinned to Menu Bar on MacOS.

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    Thank you so much! This really solved the issue! I cannot upvote your answer for whatever reason, but I'll mark it as the selected solution and I'll add a new answer with the approach I took to make it work for my scenario. Commented Sep 13, 2022 at 19:51
  • How do we make use of this code? When I go to Shortcuts it only lets me choose from apps on the right; I can find no place where it will let me paste in the above code. (Searching for "applescript" also produced no results.) Commented Sep 15, 2024 at 20:50
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    @sh37211 Using macOS 14.1.2 (23B92), Shortcuts Version 7.0 (2106.0.3) — Open the Shortcuts app, click the plus (+) sign to add a new shortcut, use the search bar to search for the "Run Applescript" action, paste the text (probably use Alfie Robles's edited version in the answer he provided below) and save it and pin it to your taskbar in the Shortcut's details. Commented Sep 21, 2024 at 20:41
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-- EDIT:

For some reason, at some point this script stopped working, so if anyone is in the same situation, this modified version did it for me. The first time you run it it asks you to grant multiple accessibility permissions, but after that, it seems to work fine.

on run {input, parameters} tell application "System Preferences" if it is running then quit delay 0.2 end if end tell tell application "System Preferences" activate set current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.trackpad" delay 1 tell application "System Events" tell front window of application process "System Preferences" repeat until (exists checkbox 2 of tab group 1) delay 0.01 end repeat click checkbox 2 of tab group 1 click checkbox 2 of tab group 1 end tell end tell end tell -- quit application "System Preferences" return input end run

-- ORIGINAL:

Ghart's answer was definitely the right approach to do this systematically. The bug still exists and in my case, I've noticed it's randomly triggered by Figma and/or Illustrator.

Using Ghart's code, I removed the part that takes data from the Shortcuts app and just left the instructions for the System Settings. Then I created a new Quick Action in Automator so that it runs the Applescript.

I saved the Quick Action then went to System Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services and my Quick Action was already listed there and I just assigned it one of my function keys that was not assigned for anything else.

So now, when the pinch to zoom functionality stops working, I just press F14 and it runs the script in the background and makes it work again.

So in conclusion:

If you want to do this with Shortcuts, use Ghart's answer.

If you want to do it with a hotkey/Automator, you can follow my mini tutorial.

This is definitely a game changer! Thank you Ghart!

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