Haptic touch disappears on Magic Trackpad 2

TidBITS Talk
1

I use a Roost computer stand for my MacBook Pro M1 Pro, so I have both an external keyboard and Magic Trackpad 2. Both have been working fine for the last few years until the trackpad suddenly lost Haptic feedback. It still works perfectly, and I can still hold my finger down to start selections, etc. I just don’t get Haptic touch any longer.

My theory is that the latest release of Monterey sends the correct information for Haptic Touch to the built-in trackpad, which still has Haptic Touch working, but not to an external trackpad, probably because the OS doesn’t anticipate a setup like mine. It connects correctly via Bluetooth, so you’d think it would work, but something is missing in translation.

I’d sure appreciate any help someone could give to restore this functionality. I’ve reported it to Apple via Feedback Assistant, but not surprisingly [gasp!], I’ve heard nothing from them about this issue.

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2

Can you test with another Mac to see if it might just be a hardware failure in the Magic Trackpad 2?

3

Thanks, Adam. The only other computers I have in the house are also running Monterey. I suppose my next step would be to take it to the Genius Bar and confirm that it’s the hardware and not the OS.

One reason I hope it’s the OS is that the color is space grey, which is no longer made by Apple.

4

G’day

Haptic feedback on my Trackpad stopped some years ago, Mojave I think was the OS at the time. Haptic aside, all other functions continue working as normal.

Apple was no great help at the time and it didn’t/doesn’t annoy me enough to make the hassle of taking it further up the Apple chain worthwhile for me. From what I could glean on the internet it seemed to be a somewhat common but random problem. May not be OS related as from what I was reading when it first struck me, people running a variety of OSs are affected.

Cheers, Gobit

5

Thanks for responding to my post. At some point in the near future I’ll need to visit the Genius Bar in the Apple Store and let them take a look. Since Apple doesn’t make the Magic Trackpad in Space Gray any longer, I just keep using it the way it is, warts and all. As I said originally, it works perfectly other than the loss of Haptic touch.

Thanks for your input!

6

Hi Ron

I’d be interested in learning the outcome of your Genius Bar visit when you get round to it – we have no Apple Stores here.

Thanks, Gobit

7

It might be worth testing on one of them anyway, just to see if it’s something specific to the Mac it’s on now. I could imagine it being related to something related to the host rather than to Monterey in general.