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TheChexican
Participant
May 15, 2012
Answered

Spacebar Shortcut: Hand Tool Showing But Not Working

  • May 15, 2012
  • 34 replies
  • 123428 views

Runing the CS6 trial on a Windows 7 Laptop (x64). I was in Photoshop (64), and noticed that when I held down the spacebar to pan the open image, the hand icon would show but the tool will not work. No matter how many times I click and drag, the image stays still. If I select the MANUALLY select the hand tool it works, but the spacebar shortcut key is non-functional. This issue persists across both the 32 & 64 bit versions of Photoshop.

Ideas? Help?

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    Correct answer TheChexican

    Thanks for the assist, Dennis & Co.

    Now, it's embarassing confession time. I did more testing, and discovered the problem persisted across different Adobe Applications. So I started looking for causes of the problem with my system, and noticed that TouchFreeze, a utility to disable the laptop trackpad when typing to prevent the cursor from being jumped around the screen by the palm of your hand, was running (I only turn it on when I'm planning on doing prolonged typing). Lo and behold, as soon as I quit it, the spacebar hand tool shortcut started working again. I use a wireless USB & Mouse, so I'm not sure why the conflict occured. Guess on some small level, the two couldn't get along.

    I got worried when I saw lots of similar forum posts like paulburd's, dating back to earlier versions of CS. Hope he and other users manage to find other easy fixes - I feel like I got lucky.

    34 replies

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    T
    TheChexicanAuthorCorrect answer
    Participant
    May 16, 2012

    Thanks for the assist, Dennis & Co.

    Now, it's embarassing confession time. I did more testing, and discovered the problem persisted across different Adobe Applications. So I started looking for causes of the problem with my system, and noticed that TouchFreeze, a utility to disable the laptop trackpad when typing to prevent the cursor from being jumped around the screen by the palm of your hand, was running (I only turn it on when I'm planning on doing prolonged typing). Lo and behold, as soon as I quit it, the spacebar hand tool shortcut started working again. I use a wireless USB & Mouse, so I'm not sure why the conflict occured. Guess on some small level, the two couldn't get along.

    I got worried when I saw lots of similar forum posts like paulburd's, dating back to earlier versions of CS. Hope he and other users manage to find other easy fixes - I feel like I got lucky.

      vertigocreative
      vertigocreative
      Participant
      January 13, 2017

      This is the answer on some Dell computers too. In the touchpad settings look for "TOUCHGUARD".

      Of course, if you deactivate it, you'll have to keep your palm away from the touchpad when typing!

        D
        douglash54615771
        Participant
        February 3, 2017

        I'll second that as a Dell laptop user using Adobe CC, switching off the Touchguard setting in my Touchpad settings did the trick.

          Semaphoric
          Community Expert
          SemaphoricCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          May 16, 2012

          This seems to be a problem with the trackpad drivers for Vista and Win7. You can see this behavior on the Desktop: if you click-drag while holding the spacebar, the cursor doesn't move. Using an external USB mouse works fine - in Photoshop too.

          paulburd
          paulburd
          Participating Frequently
          May 16, 2012

          For me, the hand doesn't even show (or work) when I hold the spacebar. This is true in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign CS6. I'm on a Mac running 10.7.4. This is very dissapointing as this is probably my most used shortcut.

            paulburd
            paulburd
            Participating Frequently
            May 16, 2012

            Strangly, mine spontaniously started working shortly after writing my earlier comment. The only thing I did was close several webpages I had open (in Chrome). I can't imagine open web pages would prevent this functionality... but I can't really explain what happened.

              B
              bobbylawless83
              Participant
              January 29, 2013

              Thanks paulburd, that fixed my problem. I have Photoshop CS6 on a Mac and my "spacebar" hand feature dissapeared completely. But then, I closed Chrome and it worked fine! I also run CodeKit, and I have this well linked with Chrome so I'm not sure if that was the issue, but closing Chrome totally did it! Thanks!

              Trevor.Dennis
              Community Expert
              Trevor.DennisCommunity Expert
              Community Expert
              May 15, 2012

              The only time I can think of when the Space bar won't pan, is when the image is zoomed to fit to screen or smaller, but you say things are OK if you select the Hand tool from the Tools panel. So it is getting into one of those unexplained situations where it is time to try resetting Photoshop's Preferences. Restart Photoshop, and immediately hold down Shift Ctrl Alt

              P
              photoin_nyc
              Participant
              July 31, 2012

              Hello guys!

              I have a question too.  The Space bar won't pan when the image is smaller then the screen. Is this a bug or did they removed the feature with CS6?

              Thank you!

              Noel Carboni
              Noel Carboni
              Legend
              July 31, 2012

              Seems the same as CS5 to me.  Do you have the full screen mode and Application Frame settings the same as when you tried it in Photoshop CS5?

              -Noel

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