Press-and-drag selection breaks in the macOS 27 Golden Gate RC 26A428 (September 11, 2026)
Chapters
What broke
Ron Elemans filed it as FB24067183 and described it in one sentence: "Changing selection in NSTableView by moving the mouse and holding down left button, does not work anymore". NSTableView is the list control under a large share of Mac apps, so this is not a cosmetic report.
The Finder has its own version of the same failure. In the MacRumors Forums thread on the release candidate, opened on September 9, 2026 for build 26A428, a tester described clicking and dragging the empty area to the left of an icon in list view to select a range of files and getting something else: "It now acts as if you had dragged the icon instead." The follow-up is the part that makes it hard to live with: "Very rarely, it actually works as expected, so either way it's buggy."
A reply in the same thread pointed at the mechanism: "They started using gestures recognisers for such things, probably it's just buggy."
TL;DR
Press-and-drag selection is broken on the macOS 27 Golden Gate release candidate, build 26A428, according to a developer roundup published on September 11, 2026 by Michael Tsai. Holding the left mouse button and moving the mouse no longer changes the selection in an NSTableView, and in Finder list view that same drag now picks up a file instead of selecting a range of rows. It is unfixed in the release candidate, Apple's notes carry no known issue for it, and as of September 11, 2026 the people hitting it are release-candidate testers on Apple silicon Macs.
- Feedback report FB24067183: "Changing selection in NSTableView by moving the mouse and holding down left button, does not work anymore".
- In Finder list view, dragging the empty area left of an icon drags that item instead, and only very rarely works correctly.
- Apple's AppKit notes record the mechanism: text selection interactions now run through NSGestureRecognizers (163365571).
- Double-clicking a Finder window title bar to zoom, scrolling while dragging a file, and three-finger drag are reported broken in the same build.
- The only workaround is a timing-dependent Finder trick from a forum thread, and it does nothing for third-party apps.
Apple documented the change, not the breakage
Apple Developer's macOS 27 release notes, a page that carries no publication date, describe the rework the developers blamed: NSTextSelectionManager now provides common text selection interactions to a view with a set of NSGestureRecognizers rather than by overriding NSEvent mouse methods, and NSTextView now uses it (163365571).
Two neighboring entries show how much of this area moved at once. A resolved issue reads "Fixed: NSClickGestureRecognizers with a click count greater than 1 will send an action before their multi-click timeout has elapsed. (173975472)". Another change, radar 176395420, makes the base NSGestureRecognizer implementation of locationInView: return NSZeroPoint and log an error, so custom subclasses have to supply their own.
What the notes do not contain is a Known Issue for table or Finder drag selection. The Finder's only resolved entry in the release candidate is unrelated, about generic suggested folder names (178093786). So the mechanism is documented and the consequence is not.
The other drag regressions in the same build
From the same forum thread: "Double-clicking on Finder window titles to zoom doesn't work anymore, either. Pretty sure that's new." And: "Scrolling while dragging a file is broken, too."
Three-finger drag is reported broken as well, and that one has an Apple response attached: "It's been marked as Potential fix identified - for a future OS update." A future OS update is not this one, which means three-finger drag, a trackpad setting some people use instead of clicking and dragging, is expected to ship broken.
The roundup lists more of the same class. Font Book "has been crashing since beta 4 when resizing the Inspector or Sidebar", reported by Kevin C. Jeff Johnson's automation-permission bug "remains unfixed in the release candidates, and barring a last minute miraculous reprieve, will remain unfixed in the public releases on Monday", and Johnson describes it this way: "Either way, just selecting something in the automation permission prompt seems to trigger the bug, causing macOS to wrongly consider the app to be running in the background." One more, not a macOS defect but a Mac problem: Paul Kafasis reports that "Apple's forthcoming tvOS 27 and HomePod OS 27 updates contain a critical bug that prevents Apple TVs and HomePods from playing AirPlay streams sent by Airfoil", his Mac app.
Who is affected, and the list to read before upgrading
On September 11, 2026 this is a release-candidate defect on Apple silicon Macs, so the people meeting it are developers and beta testers. Golden Gate does not run on Intel at all. The reason I would not file it as beta-only news is the expectation in the roundup itself: Johnson expects his bug to survive into Monday's public release, and nothing in Apple's notes suggests drag selection is being worked on.
University of Michigan ITS last updated its macOS Golden Gate known-issues page on September 11, 2026, and it is the practical list for anyone about to upgrade a working Mac. The table below is that list.
Read it against your own software rather than in general. Two entries stop work outright rather than annoying you: Logic Pro not opening, and Intel Macs not running macOS 27 at all.
| Software or setting | Reported state on September 11, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Intel Macs | Cannot run macOS 27 |
| Rosetta | May need reinstalling after the upgrade; will be discontinued in macOS 28 |
| Vectorworks 2026 | Fails to launch with a "Failure loading Support Library" dialog |
| Logic Pro | Does not open on macOS 27 |
| Compressor, Final Cut, Motion | Launch on upgrades as outdated versions that must be purchased through the App Store |
| Device Control and Data Access notifications | Recur after initial login and must be dismissed by hand |
| BeyondTrust remote screen control | Unavailable on fresh installs: Accessibility cannot be enabled for the Remote Support Customer Client |
The only workaround, and what it costs
For the Finder case, from the forum thread: click the line above or below where the selection should start, then within under a second click and begin dragging the area beside the first item you want. The reporter's own assessment is that it is annoying but better than nothing.
The cost is real. It is timing-dependent, so it fails often enough to notice, and it does nothing at all for a third-party app built on NSTableView, for three-finger drag, or for scrolling while you drag. No setting to restore the old behavior is published, and the change sits in how AppKit routes mouse input rather than in a preference, so I would not expect one to appear.
What to do today
1. If you are on macOS Tahoe and you select files by dragging, do not upgrade on release day. Wait for a point release, or test the release candidate on a spare Mac first. 2. In the Finder, select ranges by clicking the first row and shift-clicking the last, and look at the highlight before you move or delete anything. 3. If you must drag, use the timing trick above and expect it to miss.
4. If you ship a Mac app with an NSTableView, test press-and-drag selection on build 26A428 today and file a report that references FB24067183. A duplicate with a build number is worth more than a description. 5. Before any upgrade, check the table above against the software you actually run, and check whether the Mac is Apple silicon at all.
6. If you rely on three-finger drag, keep the Mac you have for now. Apple's own answer on that one is a fix in a future OS update, which is an admission that the release does not contain it.