Reopened - Touchpad issue (drag objects once the left button was clicked)

[esvee]

Hi there, I'm having exactly the same issue as this now closed, unresolved topic below. I have a 2015 MacBook Air 11inch.
Running Zorin OS 18, all updates applied.

This thread describes the issue exactly. @ang81 did this resolve anyway for you?

Touchpad issue (drag objects once the left button was clicked)

Hi guys, I’ve recently upgraded my PC to Zorin OS 18 Core a fantastic OS (it resumed my old pc)! However, my touchpad works only partially. There’s no issue when opening files or selecting objects, but when I press the left button and try to move the cursor (right or left), the touchpad becomes unresponsive. For example: When I try to select text (click on the first word and drag to the last), When I try to resize a window (click on the border and drag), Or when I need to drag and drop file…

"There’s no issue when opening files or selecting objects, but when I press the left button and try to move the cursor (right or left), the touchpad becomes unresponsive.

For example:

• When I try to select text (click on the first word and drag to the last),
• When I try to resize a window (click on the border and drag),
• Or when I need to drag and drop files."

[Nourpon]

Maybe you can try this

Trackpad Tweaks

1. Natural Scrolling: Settings → Mouse & Touchpad → Enable Natural Scrolling
2. Tap-to-Click: Settings → Mouse & Touchpad → Tap to click
3. Gestures (optional): Install touchegg for multi-finger gestures:

sudo apt install touchegg
touchegg &

Map three-finger swipe to workspace switch, pinch to zoom, etc.

[Nourpon]

you can also read this

How to fix (and adjust!) old Macbook trackpads that are sticky / unresponsive...

[esvee]

Thanks for the links. It ended up being palm rejection. The apple trackpad quirks file from upstream does not have the correct settings for an 11 inch MacBook Air trackpad. The dimensions are too large, and palm rejection is set too to low a level.

This is what fixed it for me:

Fix: MacBook Air 11" (2015) click-drag dropout on Linux Wayland

Problem: When click-dragging left-to-right or top-to-bottom (text selection, window resize, drag and drop), the trackpad would become unresponsive mid-drag. Dragging in the opposite direction worked fine.

Root cause: libinput's palm rejection was firing during physical button presses. When you depress the clickpad, your fingertip contact area increases slightly, pushing the touch size reading over libinput's AttrPalmSizeThreshold of 800. libinput then declares the touch a palm and kills it mid-drag.

The threshold of 800 comes from the generic [Apple Touchpads USB] entry in /usr/share/libinput/50-system-apple.quirks, which catches all USB Apple trackpads that don't have a specific product ID entry. Newer Apple laptop trackpads explicitly get 1600, but the MacBook Air 7,1 was never given its own entry upstream.

Fix: Create a local libinput quirks override:

bash

sudo mkdir -p /etc/libinput
sudo nano /etc/libinput/local-overrides.quirks

Paste:

ini

[MacBook Air 11 inch bcm5974 fix]
MatchName=*bcm5974*
MatchUdevType=touchpad
AttrSizeHint=104x62
AttrPalmSizeThreshold=1600

Then reboot.

Notes:

• AttrSizeHint=104x62 corrects the trackpad dimensions (upstream assumes 104x75mm, the 11" trackpad is actually ~104x62mm)
• AttrPalmSizeThreshold=1600 matches what upstream already sets for similarly-aged Apple hardware
• The fix is matched by device driver name (bcm5974), not DMI/SMBIOS, so it works regardless of any BIOS/OpenCore model spoofing

---

Feel free to post that anywhere — it's a gap in upstream libinput that will affect anyone running a MacBook Air 7,1 or 7,2 on Linux.