Spacebar Shortcut: Hand Tool Showing But Not Working

[TheChexican]

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?

[Trevor.Dennis]

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

[photoin_nyc]

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]

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

[conroy]

BogdanStetco wrote:

Hello guys!

... The Space bar won't pan when the image is smaller then the screen ...

Welcome to the forum!

The pan works with images smaller than the window in "Full Screen Mode" and "Full Screen Mode With Menu Bar". Press F key to cycle through these modes and "Standard Screen Mode".

[photoin_nyc]

@Noel I am in Standard Screen Mode.

@Conroy Thank! I know that it works in both of full screen modes but I was wondering if it works the same way even in Standard Screen Mode.

Thank you guys!

[conroy]

I was wondering if it works the same way even in Standard Screen Mode.

No, not in CS6 or CS5.1 on a Mac. Is there a version that you remember it working in?

[photoin_nyc]

If I'm not wrong it was working on CS5, if not definitely was working on CS3. Anyway thank you so much for your help!

[CenMedArts]

I was having this issue while using my Wacom bamboo tablet.  I found a tip in a forum, to disable all of Windows touchscreen/touchpad features in the control panel and it worked like a charm. 

[paulburd]

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.

[Guest]

There was a problem aired a year ago about a bug in Trackball mouse and Photoshop.  If memory seerves me corretly (and it does not always) believe it was holding the space bar and trying to move image. 

Would not work on several Window machines..

If using a track ball try a wired mouse.

[paulburd]

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.

[TheChexican]

A lot of the threads I read for past occurences mentioned that functionality would be restored for them if Chrome/Firefox was closed. Guess that's the case with your problem?

I tried that, and it didn't work - have to say I'm a bit thankful. Better to have to close a tiny utility program than my main browser... 😕

[KeyStudio]

The Chrome (and I guess Firefox) problem was due to the Flash plugin. Once I disabled that, I got my space bar back in CS5.5. But now that I'm in CS6, the shortcut is not working no matter what browsers I close (even all of them). I will look into using a wired mouse but I'd really like to have both working together.

[Mmurph19]

Hello:    I am using Photoshop CS6 and the spacebar will not function for me either.

I am creating a circle, duplicate the layer, then i select the subtract front shape ... after this i need to be able to use the spacebar to center my subtracting circle so thatt i end up w/a nice border.

I closed firefox but that didn't work and so then I restarted my computer w/out opening FF at all and still the spacebar will not work.

Rather than the hand icon appearing the only thing that changes is that the small black box that shows the height and width adds the x & y demensions.

Does anyone know if i need to turn something on or off in order to enable the spacebar?

Thank you for your time : )

Murph

[bobbylawless83]

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!

[ed-lea]

Same thing happens to me, sometimes I have to quit Chrome and the spacebar shortcut works again. I can even start up Chrome again and the shortcut continues to work.

Seems more related to Chrome running a lot of tabs or being open for a long time.

[krysten220]

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.

Thanks for posting this paulburd! Problem was fixed after I closed a few tabs in Chrome. Kind of bizarre but glad it was an easy solution.

[Ryan707]

Thanks for mentioning that.. I quit Chrome & Photoshop immediately worked correctly.

[Semaphoric]

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.

[TheChexican · Accepted solution]

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]

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!

[douglash54615771]

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

[Guest]

Hi everyone! I had a similiar problem in InDesign CS6 but I managed to solve the problem.

InDesign CS6

1) Edit -> Key Shortcuts

2) Select "Tools" in Product Area drop down menu

3) Select "Hand Tool"

4) Click the empty field of "New Shortcut"

5) Press spacebar and "Space" text automatically appears on this field.

6) You will be prompted to save default copy, and click Ok

7) You should be able to see the new entry "Default: Space" on the Current Shortcuts box.

8) Click "Default: H" and then press "Remove" button.

9) You are done. It should be working when you press spacebar and the screen moves.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Andre

[KeyStudio]

Andre, you're a life-saver! Thanks!