Spacebar not working as quick hand tool on MAC – Adobe Illustrator

My issue was having Microsoft Excel open

On mac : With the app closed, go to the finder menu GO, press alt to show LIBRARY, open the PREFERENCES folder, then in the Adobe Illustrator ## Settings folder, erase or rename the folder within. 

This will reset all your preferences, shortcuts and panels, so hand tool, or any other bug will work again.

You can try to move back your shortcuts or spacework to the new created preference folder when app is closed, but it might bring the bug back. 

This solution work all the time for all adobe apps.

Same as the user known as "casey" -  in my case, it was because I had 'Enable Full Keyboard Access' on my 'Settings' -> 'Accessibility' -> 'Keyboard 'ticked. Once I unticked that, I could use the spacebar as the quickhand tool again

The number one suggestion should really be to quit Photoshop and then restart the app and test the space bar before restarting the entire computer or checking to see which programs are interfering. Because that worked for me. I restarted Photoshop and lo and behold my spacebar was working and of course I have the latest updates and all that for 2024.

The app that hijacked it for me was Notes. It was stuck and wouldn't quit when I hit restart to see if rebooting would help. Instead, force quitting Notes and relaunching Illustrator worked for me.

I understand that i need to close my other apps to get my "space bar shortcut" back,
but the propblem is : i need those apps to work!
i cannot close everything each time i need illustrator, witch is "always". It doesn't make sense.

Could adobe just solve the problem instead? thanks.

wow. closing notes did it for me ! thank you for the s-tier advice 

I have Webroot running when I force quit it the hand tool comes back

In mt case it was Webroot being the spacebar thief.