The Mac, the Lion, the Spotify and the tale of the dead mouse clicks

• January 11, 2012

This one was driving me nuts. On occasion it seemed that my Magic Mouse was malfunctioning. If the mouse had been left in one position for a couple of seconds, the first mouse click thereafter would not register. If I clicked a second time, it would work. The built-in trackpad exhibited the same problem, so it had to be a software issue.

OK, off google-hunting for an answer, which led me to various suggestions:

• It could be JiTouch, so I tried disabling that. Didn’t help.

• Could be a nearby Bluetooth mouse with a nearly dead battery that was causing the issue. I actually had a Magic Trackpad with a dying battery connected to a Mac Mini downstairs, so I had high hopes for this solution. Changed the battery on the trackpad - clicks still didn’t register.

• A suggestion of sleeping the Mac and waking it back up didn’t work either. I was getting quite desperate by now, fearing that I might have to reinstall Lion.

• Finally, I found this. Turns out, Spotify can eat left clicks! Quitting Spotify did the trick.

After a bit more testing, it seems that the problem only arises if Spotify starts up when you log in to your computer (say, if you had Spotify running when you restarted). Quitting and restarting Spotify fixes the click problem.

Hopefully this post will help out others with this issue. Took a bit of hunting to fix this one!