Making Hand Tool the Default Choice

[vladk5779022]

In Adobe Acrobat Professional, after I select the Selection Tool and close the document, the next document which I open has the Selection Tool selected. (The program remembers the last choice.) What needs to be changed in the settings so that documents may always open with the Hand (Pan) tool selected?

[noemirPS · Accepted solution]

Interestingly enough - afters hours of searching for a solution this is what worked for me:

• I opened a PDF, right-clicked to select the Hand Tool
• In Edit>Preferences>Accessibility>CHECK "Always display the keyboard selection cursor">Click OK (this was unchecked by default)
• In Edit>Preferences>General - Change Touch Mode to Always (This was Auto-detect by default)

So, essentially I did the reverse of everything I found online and it worked.  I have closed and opened multiple PDF's and the Hand Tool is always the default.  Hope this helps!

[RWui · Accepted solution]

Just got off with Enterprise Support and they said these recent changes are by design.  They know all these work arounds that have been floating around on these forums no longer work after this latest update.

The Support Tech provided had me change a registry key and it fixed the problem. 

Browse to key:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\Selection
Set aDefaultSelect=Hand (instead of Select)

We did this several months ago, but updates revert this back to Select.  But it works.  Just have to redo it depending on the scope of the update.  

Once you create this entry, you can export this key to a .REG file.  Then you can simply run this file on all affected comptuers.  I would have your IT do this.

Good luck.

[HaVX · Accepted solution]

I have just updated my Acrobat DC to version 2022.002.20212 | 64-bit and found that this update have not fixed the issue yet:

In Non-Touch Mode, the tool is default to the Select Tool. In this mode, if I change to the Hand Tool, Acrobat can't let me "Make Hand tool select text & images", even if I checked this option.

In Touch Mode, the tool is default to the Hand Tool. In this mode, the "Make Hand tool select text & images" option works well. But I don't want the Touch Mode.

Workaround solution: set the following value
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\Selection]
"aDefaultSelect"="Hand"

[Roger26312052nfhf · Accepted solution]

The only solution that worked for me was to:

1. Open Acrobat

2. Open random pdf document

3. Select "comment" tool

4. When in 'comment mode' left-click document and select Hand tool.

5. Close and reopen Acrobat

6. Hand tool should now be set as default.

[Jonathan33662419sr8k · Accepted solution]

After dealing with this issue for far too long, in the end as always it was obvious and for some reason it is not the top answer on any of the discussions I found surrounding the topic of the defaulting hand tool. 

Simply go to edit, then preferences and in general you may notice that touch mode is set on always or auto-detect. Change it to prompt on launch or never. Done.

This happened in my case because I had to delete and download Adobe again, and if you have a touch screen computer it will assume you want to get handsy so it will default to the hand. Switch it to prompt on launch or never and you'll get the select tool back regardless of whatever is going on in accessibility or the boxes for adjusting how the hand tool works. 

[donald_7193 · Accepted solution]

Thanks Roger. I had several different navigation tools disappear from my toolbar, which I keep on top and always open. I went to Comment tool as you said and found the missing tools at the bottom. There is what looks like a horizontal ruler with 5 dots in it, this "moves page control into toolbar." That moved them all into the toolbar as I previously had. There is the same ruler to move them out of the toolbar, I must have accidently hit that at some point. Problem solved! 

[qwerty62]

Workd with Acrobat CC in July 2024. Thank you!

[Francisco27094106tsjw]

At last something that worked and easy! Thanks a lot, noemirPS!

[damiles123]

Thank you, so much, @noemirPS!

[noemirPS]

glad it helped.

[JR Boulay]

Thank you for this nice workaround.

Please Adobe fix this bug!!!

[CLAUDIA23297562j8p9]

I tried all of the options here and none worked, except for going to the: - Click the hand tool while viewing a document, then Edit < Preferences < General < Touch Mode: Select from the dropdown menu "Always". Click ok, then Close the pdf reader then open it, it'll bring the hand tool as your default.

[masud.pce]

Hand tool and selection tool is related to touch mode settings.

When the program detects that the user is using a touch screen then it selects hand tool. so that your hand can be used as usual way. But when it detects that , there is no touch input/display connected then it selects selection tool (cursor) for using with mouse.

So you need to set touch mode option to >Always. Thus the program will always presume that the user is in touch mode. And give you the hand tool as default.

To make hand tool default ,
Go to : Edit > Preferences > General >Touch Mode > Always

[hart8210]

Thank you!  This is a few months late, but I swear I didn't even have this issue last week.  I open many different pdf files all day every day and prefer the Hand tool as default.  This week every pdf opened defaulted to Select tool;  I never noticed this behavior before.  Am I crazy or could something have changed without my doing so?  But yes, the touch screen "always on" tip worked, for now.  Thanks!

[Maslamah]

Same problem here, I use program quite frequently but today when I opened it it was on select tool. I remember I solved it a few months ago by following noemirPS's comment after searching the whole internet,

but I'm back to square one now. 

[RWui]

Sadly, dozens users in my office are suffering the same problem after the latest update.  We have performed the various "fixes" and "workarounds" and none of them work anymore.

We used to be able to set Touch Mode to Always and the Hand Tool would end up being the default.  But after this latest update, even with it set to Always, as soon as you open a new file it starts off with the Selection Tool.

Still not sure why after the years of posts and complaints why they still have not simply come out with an option in Preferences to simply let the user select their default tool.

Maddening.

[dedwardsjr]

Having the issue with a few of our users today as well!  So frustrating!

[darrellc54457103]

Same here as of this morning. Back to square one again after trying past solutions. Staying tuned. 

[hart8210]

Wow.  Glad they fixed the bug of users having an option on this default setting! /s

[RWui · Accepted solution]

Just got off with Enterprise Support and they said these recent changes are by design.  They know all these work arounds that have been floating around on these forums no longer work after this latest update.

The Support Tech provided had me change a registry key and it fixed the problem. 

Browse to key:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\Selection
Set aDefaultSelect=Hand (instead of Select)

We did this several months ago, but updates revert this back to Select.  But it works.  Just have to redo it depending on the scope of the update.  

Once you create this entry, you can export this key to a .REG file.  Then you can simply run this file on all affected comptuers.  I would have your IT do this.

Good luck.

[Dota2Pro]

In my computer, each time I use Adobe DC, the registry file reverts back to "Select", Is there a way to restrict the permissions of this registry file?

[Dota2Pro]

As per the recommendations of an anonymous person, on top of the changes above, I also changed the data of bShowKeyboardSelectionCursor to 0 and it worked!

[smsaq4u]

This worked like a charm, thanks for the tip!

[McCready1982]

Thanks, this took care of the problem (for now).

[dedwardsjr]

This worked like a charm, thanks for the tip!

[smsaq4u]

This worked like a charm, thanks for the tip!!!.....

[Nathan24879315hpqs]

The regedit worked for me. Thank you! Such an annoyance solved by the community! Power to the community...! since Adobe can't seem to make a toggle switch in the settings lol

[anthony carrabino]

worked ... thank you for sharing this. 

[JR Boulay]

"I also changed the data of bShowKeyboardSelectionCursor to 0 and it worked!"

Dota2Pro Please can you elaborate?

It don't understand how to do this.

[McCready1982]

Open regedit and go to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\Selection.

Right-click bShowKeyboardSelectionCursor > Modify > set value to 0.

[Rikoski]

This worked! thanks a ton