Disable MacBook Trackpad When a Mouse Is Connected

You're mousing along and the cursor suddenly teleports, or a window scrolls itself — because your palm grazed the built-in trackpad while you typed. macOS has a purpose-built fix: a toggle that deadens the internal trackpad automatically whenever a mouse is connected, and revives it the moment the mouse goes away.

Turn it on

1. Open System Settings → Accessibility.
2. Under the Motor section, select Pointer Control.
3. Turn on Ignore built-in trackpad when mouse or wireless trackpad is present.

It applies instantly — no restart — and the path is the same on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia. The undo is the same switch: turn it off and the built-in trackpad works alongside the mouse again.

What counts as "a mouse is present"

Any pointing device macOS can see: a USB mouse, a Bluetooth mouse, a mouse on a vendor's own 2.4 GHz dongle, or an external Magic Trackpad — note the toggle's full name includes "wireless trackpad," so docking with a Magic Trackpad also silences the built-in one. The moment every external device disappears — dongle unplugged, Bluetooth mouse powered off or out of range — the built-in trackpad comes back to life automatically. You don't manage anything day to day.

One subtlety: a Bluetooth mouse that's merely idle is still connected, so the trackpad stays ignored until the mouse actually disconnects. If your mouse sleeps aggressively and drops the connection, expect the trackpad to wake with it — a few seconds of dead trackpad followed by revival is the setting working as designed.

Who actually needs this

• Typists who brush the trackpad — the classic case: your right palm rides the trackpad's corner while typing, and the cursor jumps mid-sentence into another line of text.
• Desk setups with an external keyboard laid over the MacBook — some people park a keyboard on top of the closed-enough laptop; this toggle stops the buried trackpad registering phantom touches.
• Anyone with a cat — no further explanation required.

What you give up is real, so weigh it: with a mouse connected you lose trackpad gestures entirely — no pinch to zoom, no swipe between Spaces, no Mission Control swipe. If your workflow leans on gestures even while mousing, leave the toggle off and fix the palm problem at its source (typing position, or a keyboard tray that moves your palms off the glass).

If your problem is specifically the cursor jumping while typing and you don't use a mouse, this toggle can't help (there's no mouse present) — for that, make the trackpad less sensitive to accidental palm contact instead.

The gotcha to remember

Months from now, your trackpad will appear to die: the cursor moves only with the mouse, and the glass under your fingers does nothing. Before you book a repair, remember this setting. A forgotten USB dongle in a port, or a Bluetooth mouse switched on in a bag nearby, counts as "mouse present" and keeps the trackpad ignored. It's the first thing to rule out when a MacBook trackpad "stops working" — flip the toggle off and test. Support forums are full of "trackpad replaced, problem persists" stories that end at this switch.

Related but separate: Mouse Keys (in the same Pointer Control pane) has its own "Ignore built-in trackpad when Mouse Keys is on" option. If your trackpad is dead and this article's toggle is off, check that one too.

If the trackpad stays dead

Toggle off, no mouse anywhere, and the built-in trackpad still doesn't respond? Then it's not this setting — work through the checks in trackpad not working on Mac, from settings conflicts to hardware diagnostics.