Mouse pointer keeps jumping to bottom left of screen on M1 MBA

[ohbrilliance]

I've had this M1 MBA since March, and there's been an intermittent problem that's getting worse.
Every once in a while the mouse pointer jumps to the bottom left corner of the screen and keeps jumping back when I try moving it several times for the next several seconds. It may be like that every 10 minutes, or every hour, and sometimes doesn't happen for hours or even days.

Has anybody else experienced this and know of a solution?

This happens whether I'm using the trackpad or a mouse and isn't tied to a specific application (in the foreground at least). Rebooting can sometimes cause it to stop for a while but not always. Resetting SMC hasn't helped. It's also happened through multiple MacOS versions, including 11.6. I don't know if it's a hardware, application or configuration issue.
Apple's advice is to bring it in, but that would be very disruptive to lose a machine for a week or so when I'm working from home.

 

[altaic]

Does it happen while on battery (i.e. unplugged)? If not, it could be a bad ground or power supply. I’d go so far as also unplugging all accessories and testing.

 

[ohbrilliance]

Thanks for the suggestion. It happens whether connected to the power or on battery.
I have two more things to try: Closing all applications and opening one that I don't normally use and see whether it still happens. And reinstalling the OS and restoring from a time machine backup.

 

[altaic]

I'd also turn off bluetooth to try to narrow it down.

 

[ohbrilliance]

The issue is back ten minutes after turning off bluetooth.

 

[altaic]

The only other non-hardware cause I can think of is that you might have an accessibility extension (System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Privacy tab -> Accessibility) or an accessibility setting (System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Pointer Control) that's messing with the pointer.

Edit: Also make sure screen sharing, remote management, and remote apple events are turned off (System Preferences -> Sharing), just in case.

 

[ohbrilliance]

Thanks again! I've disabled accessibility access to three apps that had it: Parallels, VMWare Horizon and Magnet. I'll see whether that helps. There was nothing strange in the Pointer settings and no sharing options were enabled.

 

[altaic]

I could see any of those three being the cause. Could also be an app doing something funny. I’d close everything and slowly use the process of elimination.

If it’s something else, you’d need to dive into logs and run diagnostics— requires some dev skills and more than some free time. A clean install can be a good option in that case.

It could also be a hardware fault— though from what I recall from the multitouch APIs, the pointer suddenly jumping to the corner doesn’t make sense to me.

Anyway, good luck!

 

[ohbrilliance]

Thanks, you've really been a great help! An hour later and it hasn't happened again. It's been happening every few minutes today, so I'm cautiously optimistic. I'll give it a while and enable each item one by one. I'll report back if I discover the culprit. The only one I use regularly is Magnet.

I had previously kept an eye on system.log and nothing had been recorded at the time the cursor jumped.

I just hope this is solved. The M1 MBA is a lovely and fast machine, and this glitch has been very annoying.

 

[ohbrilliance]

It could also be a hardware fault— though from what I recall from the multitouch APIs, the pointer suddenly jumping to the corner doesn’t make sense to me.

All was good for an hour and then it started happening again.

BUT I've just found the culprit. Tilting the MacBook causes it to happen! It happens consistently when I test this. Sitting still and the mouse pointer stays where it's meant to. Tilt the laptop and it jumps to the corner. I mostly use the laptop on my lap so I suppose the inconsistency could be due to my posture and how much I'm concentrating on the task at hand or moving.

I'm guessing then that there's something wrong with the accelerometer used for sudden motion detection. I've run the command to try to disable it (sudo pmset -a sms 0) but the sms setting doesn't appear after running smset -g. It doesn't appear even after reenabling. So I don't know if my attempt to disable it have worked. In either case it doesn't solve the pointer jumping.

Being able to reliably reproduce the issue will help in getting it fixed, if I do need to take it in.

 

[altaic]

That’s an unexpected surprise and it should be good fodder for Apple engineers. If you have a developer account, I suggest submitting a radar bug report before taking your hardware in so you might get this properly figured out. Best of luck!

 

[marcelp]

Hey guys, I will try this one, I hope it helps https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/oydvbj Best

 

[Sam Kass]

I know this is an old thread, but I found it searching on DuckDuckGo when I had the same problem. For me, it only happens when I'm running Apple Photos. If I quit Photos, it doesn't happen. I saw an Apple Discussion thread which found the same true of Microsoft Outlook for them. I can watch any amount of YouTube and have it not happen, though.