El Capitan fresh install loses three finger drag option in Trackpad menu settings, and here’s how to tune it back on

If you use a Magic Trackpad and are like me and did a clean install of El Capitan instead of installing on top of Yosemite, then you might have noticed that the three finger drag Multi-Touch Gesture was gone. Before, it was an option inside the standard Trackpad settings menu, but now, when going into that menu, the option to drag windows and select text using three fingers has been removed. This has been almost a complete change for me as I’ve been using that feature for so long. I had to break myself from trying to drag or select in that manner.

Today, as I was digging around in the System Settings I found and option for Mouse & Trackpad down inside of the Accessibility settings. This felt a little weird as I had been used to only doing anything with my Magic Trackpad by using the Trackpad menu options inside System Preferences.

Once that window is open, you will see Trackpad Options. My immediate thoughts were that this had to be a shortcut back to the standard Trackpad menu and I almost did not bother to click on it. I’m so glad I did because I found this to be a deeper set of menus for the Trackpad.

You have the option to change the scrolling preference with inertia scrolling or without. Having this option is great because of how fluid it makes scrolling.

Below that is where my eyes lit up. The option to enable dragging was unchecked by default. So, I checked it ‘on’ and then the dropdown menu changed from Without Drag Lock to Three Finger Drag. Thus, allowing the ability on the Trackpad and Magic Trackpad to drag items and select text using a simple three finger motion on the Trackpad.

Why this was moved to Accessibility I have no idea. Maybe some people got confused and aggravated with accidentally selecting or dragging. All I know is I found the option and it makes my day.