Space Bar Hand Move & CMD-Space Zoom Not Working—CS5

[rudy713]

Today, all of a sudden, two of my most used functions—holding down the space bar to move the image around and holding down CMD-space bar to zoom—just up and quit on me (I do like the "Scrubby" but it took a little getting used to. It's very touch screen-esque).

I did all of the normal trouble shooting such as deleting the prefs, relaunching, restarting, etc. Nothing. The functions work fine in the other CS5 programs.

Anybody else come across this? I checked through all of the prefs thinking that perhaps I accidentally changed something but I couldn't find anything. If all else fails, I'll do an uninstall/reinstall but only as a last resort.

I did notice that Adobe finally fixed the Distort (in Full Screen Mode) bug that was killing me in CS4.

Thanks for any help.

[J453]

Hi James,

Have you tried the solutions in this document? Keyboard shortcuts stop working in Photoshop

[chocolategroove]

In my case, it was Webroot Antivirus causing conflict. Shut it down and space bar in Photoshop started working again.

[jlmiles8]

Disabling Webroot and Sophos did not help. Still working through other suggestions. Please keep thread open!

[benj_v]

For me, it's a delay problem :

When the CMD+Space with the click of my trackpad or the pen from my tablet doesn't work, it's not a total missfunction, but a delay problem. Try it : when you make this shortcut (CMD+SPACE+Click), stay with your "click" pressed on and make the zooms gesture : after 2/3s, the mouvement is unlocked, and works fine if you stay pressed.

So, lag/delay problem ?

[AnimoMotion]

I regularly have this problem and everyone on the office does too. Lots of attempts to solve it, have everything else shut down, using scroll wheel on wacom tablet, nothing helps. Then, sporadically, it works again. Total mystery.

Question: being as this is surely on of the most used features in a vector based program - and clearly some people are having issue with the Cmd key conflicting with OS shortcuts etc - why is it not as simple as in photoshop, where, by the very nature of photoshop, there will be a limit to zooming? holding Z to zoom in and out and R to rotate and Esc to rest is so simple, and its an Adobe product?

Things like this are what make people think Illustrator is so frustrating to use, and why other vector drawing and design apps are rapidly gaining ground. Please help, this should be absolutely simple - its a core function.

[Brian MacDougall]

No hand tool or Command Spacebar zoom in either Photoshop or ID for me. New problem, just cropped up in the last month. Quitting Safari fixed it right up. I think Hulu and however they are implementing Flash or Air in the browser is the problem. Easy fix, once you know.

[AnimoMotion]

Might have been an easy for you Brian, but I don't use Safari and it hasn't helped me, so something else must also be creating this issue.

[MarcSwarbrick]

I had this problem as well, just InDesign though (El Capitan 10.11.4 and InDesign 2015.3 Build 11.3.0.34) I was going to do a full system reboot as ekfny suggested so shut down all apps except InDesign, gave it one last try and it was working again so I'm thinking a conflict with some other app is causing the issue. I was running Coda, Airmail and Safari.

[Helen_Melville]

Hi guys, crazy solution, but this actually worked for me.  When the Adobe help desk person suggested it I felt pretty irritated with him, but guess what...  My space bar gets a little sticky.  I have no idea why this only appears to affect me in Photoshop, all I know is the solution - a slightly harder jab at the space bar makes it 'unstuck' and gets the software working again. 

I know it sounds crazy, but it worked for me after much stress and attempts to fix via other more complex means.  Hope this works for you.

[詠翔張47670191]

I have the same problem in my photoshop(OS 10.11.6/CC 2015.5) .

And I found that if you turn off Creative Cloud, the problem fixed.

Turn on CC again and it’s still working. Maybe it's some little bug.

Hope this would help.

[Chris5E31]

Oh my god. You are my hero. This was exactly the right answer: 

Check the OS shortcuts in System Preferences, especially the keyboard->Keyboard Shortcut settings, and Universal Access.  The modifier spacebar keys are frequently used to change localized keyboard settings.

[davids84228917]

@Chris Cox • , May 15, 2010

I've been having the same problem. In fact the Space bar entirely ceased to function in Photoshop (Mac OS) with scrolling also. Resetting "OS shortcuts in System Preferences, under Keyboard Shortcut settings, and Universal Access." worked the second time I tried it, though in my case it was under System Preferences/ Accessibility/ Keyboard/ Navigation/ Enable Full Keyboard Access. I unchecked it, powered down my mac, restarted resetting the PRAM: 

1. Press the power button, and as soon as you power up the laptop, hold down Command-Option-P-R.
2. Keep holding down those keys for about 20 seconds. Then let go and allow your Mac to continue starting normally. If you have an older Mac that chimes at boot, hold down the keys until you hear a second startup chime.  This seems to have worked for me on the second go trying. Everything back to normal in Photoshop now with the space bar operative. No idea how this worked though.