From completely dysfunctional to erratic functionality – Apple’s advanced three finger swipe gesture has been widely reported to be broken ever since the last Mac OS X Mountain Lion update to 10.8.5.
Typically, the three finger swipe can be setup within the Mac OS X Trackpad System Preferences to be used to do any of the following:
- swipe between pages – which not only works in Safari but also in Finder windows
- swipe between full-screen apps
Despite the many reported attempts at more typical solutions, eg restores and deleting preferences the issue seems to remain.
The final answer lies in resetting the hardware. Namely the System Management Controller (SMC).
Apple’s knowledge base article on how to go about resetting your Mac’s SMC can be found here.