Okay, so I think I might be able to help. I'm not a tech expert, but I had this issue today. It only started happening after I had an new hard drive put in, at which point a new internet security program was installed on my computer. Before this program was on my machine, this "temporary hand tool with the use of the space bar in Adobe CS products not working" problem did not occur. So, I figured it had to do with upgrading from OS 10.6 to OS 10.7 or with Webroot {the internet security program}, since those were really the only things that changed from pre- hard drive crash to post- hard drive crash. When I was poking around Webroot, I noticed there was a "Pause Secure Keyboard Entry" button to choose. Seeing that word "keyboard" was the lightbulb moment. Coupled with the comment above from Larry G. Schneider...
It's a Mac OS security bit which blocks the modifier keys from working if there is an open port which has access. It's supposed to prevent malware from executing system events.
I figured that my Webroot {which is meant to prevent malware and such} was overriding certain keyboard functions to prevent malware from detecting my keyed entries in place that could breech security on my machine. So, I decided to try turning that pause button on... and sure enough, my temporary space bar hand tool came back. That is the only thing that worked. Not quitting out of Chrome. I suspect the reason for that is because Webroot was still operating outside of my Chrome application being open and active. So, for those who were able to get it to work again by quitting Chrome {or Safari, Firefox, etc... any of the above mentioned}, perhaps in quitting out, it was automatically quitting some other type of security extension that is loaded in the browser that does not work independently of the browser, but only when the browser is open. Quitting the browser would quit the security extension that was preventing keystroke detection and securing keyboard entry. Apparently, this could also be turned on in Terminal {something I discovered by researching my problem and finding an article about it}. See screen capture below. So, if it can also be turned on there, I imagine it's something that comes with several applications or extensions. If you are experiencing this problem, my suggestion is to find out if there is somewhere on your machine, in some running program, where this security is turned on, and then try turning it off to see if you got your hand tool back. It worked immediately for me after having tried many other things. This might also explain why it's only a temporary fix for some... why it returns, because the default of that program that has the security {Secure Keyboard Entry} is to be on. The nice thing about Webroot is that the button to pause it is always available up in my top menu bar by the date and time on my mac, under the Webroot icon. I can pause it whenever I'm in InDesign {which is where I was experiencing the "bug"}, and then unpause it when I'm not using InDesign to restart that added measure of security. Hope this helps a lot of people with this issue. I don't seem to have found a solid answer on any forum, but this seems pretty thorough to me. Interested in finding out if others are helped by these same steps. I hope so. And if so, I hope that more applications will make it more obvious so that people don't have to dig around so much. For instance, it would be nice if Adobe saw it as a known and fixable issue and provided documentation about it... what to do or check if it happens to you... so that people won't have to hunt around as much as I did {although, that part was kind of fun and I felt pretty smart and accomplished afterward... even knew the fix when talking to a Geeksquad guy while he was not aware of the problem nor did he have any idea what to suggest}. For me, it was beyond frustrating, because I use that function in InDesign ALL the time. Hopefully Adobe will put something about this in their Help. Perhaps it's already there?? I just know I didn't find anyt Anyway, just goes to show how much these forums help. Without this thread, I might not have thought twice about the "Pause Secure Keyboard Entry" button when I saw it. Hope everyone gets a permanent solution to this problem!
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