At times my cursor moves on its own. It drives me nuts. If this is too trivial, so be it.
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Are you using a mouse/trackpad connected by bluetooth?
Does someone else have the ability to control it?
My son used to love winding folks up with this.
Just the trackpad on my M2 MacBook Pro.
There are no details about the device so I am venturing some guesses: The cursor may move on its own due to dirty/oily trackpad, interference from other devices (e.g. multiple mice/tracking devices), swelling battery pushing against the trackpad.
Unless my dog is smarter than I realized, I’m on my own.
M2 16" MacBookPro. I’m currently running Sonoma-beta, but this behavior has persisted through OS updates and upgrades. I will check out some of your suggestions.
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Well if he doesn’t seem overly amused, it’s probably not him…
If there’s no other Bluetooth devices, sounds like a service call may be needed.
I have an M2 16" Macbook Pro. I’ve noticed the cursor occasionally jumping around without an express gesture on my part, which is sometimes REALLY annoying.
I live in a very arid, hot, dry region of the country and have leaned towards attributing the movement to some form of static electricity. I’ve noticed that since the summer monsoon system has rolled in, the random movements have significantly decreased–due, I think, to increased humidity. YMMV.
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About nine times out of ten it’s a swollen battery under the trackpad.
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On a 7 month old (or less) computer? Unlikely. I’d like to see your supporting data. I seem to have missed all the traffic regarding the swelling of batteries in M2 Macbook Pros, introduced in Jan 2023.
I thought I was replying to Frank…
Then, sorry. It appeared that you were directly replying to me.
I too suggested swollen battery as one of the reasons before seeing Frank’s initial mention of M2 16” MacBook Pro (we posted almost simultaneously). It is indeed unlikely to be the case for such a new device.
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In both my 2015 trackpad-only and my 2022 MBP MI trackpad-only, the cursor jumps randomly to different parts of text. It’s annoying as hell. Apple is unresponsive.
I haven’t narrowed it down to specific features in Trackpad, but I eliminated the problem by unchecking all of them (on the advice of my friend Adam Steinberg). Added one or two and it was stable. I have a few checked now and it’s back. At some point I’ll do more thorough troubleshooting, but it’s not reproducible at will. Have to wait for it to happen.
Could it be a problem with palm rejection?
When I type on any laptop with a large trackpad, my wrists frequently touch the corners, causing the pointer to move about randomly. There are usually system settings to try and prevent this, but they don’t always work that well.
I’ve never been able to solve this problem, but I work around it by disabling the “tap” gesture for clicking (so I have to actually press down in order to click on something). This way, my wrists may move the pointer, but they won’t click on anything, so it doesn’t mess up my typing.
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I imagine it could be, but it was the first thing I thought of. I have small hands and with both MBPs I was super careful. I just don’t angle my hands/wrists in a way that could be problematic.
But I’m sure one of the features I disabled was Tap to click, which I now have enabled and it’s happening again. I’ll have to experiment with disabling it now – thanks for the suggestion!
Thank you for your reply. I feared that I was an idiot and shouldn’t be bothering this esteemed community with something that might be trivial. I’m not happy that you’ve got the problem, but I’m grateful to learn I’m not alone.
Thanks for the suggestion. I believe (hope) that my Mac is too new for that to be the issue. I don’t see anything on the exterior which looks suspicious. I have had a swollen battery in the past and there’s nothing like that going on.
As with the other victim, I share your pain, but It is good to know I’m not alone.
Your advice about unchecking all options is great. Right now, I’d be happy to give up certain features for a stable cursor. Thanks.
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