
How to enable the touchpad in Windows 7 and earlier. How to enable the touchpad in Windows 8 and 10. How to disable the touchpad in Windows 7 and earlier. How to disable the touchpad in Windows 8 and 10. The exact steps may differ slightly, depending on the laptop’s manufacturer, so you may need to use some intuition to achieve your desired outcome. Most users find themselves in situations where they would like the touchpad on (e.g., no external mouse) or off (e.g., accidentally moving the mouse cursor with their palm while typing). But of course if you forgot to disable it, or if you didn’t realize it was enabled in the first place, you may lead to the conclusion that there is some problem with the Mac, the trackpad, or the mouse, when in reality it’s simply a software setting to avoid unintentional tracking motions and input.The touchpad on a laptop is a convenient way to add the functionality of a mouse without needing an extra peripheral. Many Mac users enable this setting if they have cats or kids, or if they find themselves in another situation where the built-in trackpad on a Mac is frequently being touched or bumped against while they’re trying to work with an external pointing device. If for whatever reason the MacBook is still unable to use both tracking devices at the same time, you may need to go further to troubleshoot Mac mouse and trackpad issues, often it’s an issue with battery life of an external device, a USB port or cable, crud jammed into the optical lens or accumulated on a tracking surface, or some odd preference issue where removing the relevant plist files can resolve the difficulty. You should not need to reboot the Mac for any change to take effect.
If you had previously disconnected the external tracking device, go ahead and reconnect it again. Now go ahead and try using both the external mouse or trackpad and the internal trackpad together again, it should work just fine as expected. Uncheck the box next to “Ignore built-in trackpad when mouse or wireless trackpad is present”.Select “Mouse & Trackpad” from the accessibility sidebar options.Go to the Apple menu and choose “System Preferences”.
This applies to all MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air hardware that is also using an external tracking device, whether it’s a mouse or trackpad, USB or Bluetooth. How to Fix Inability to Use MacBook Trackpad & Mouse at the Same Time
This walkthrough will quickly show you how to fix this issue and get a MacBook Pro or MacBook able to work with both the built-in trackpad as well as an external mouse or external trackpad.