macbook trackpad pinch to zoom keeps malfunctioning

Good day to you bigstimpycat, 

We understand that you’re having an issue with a specific gesture. 

What happens when attempting to use the gesture? Is there no response or does a different response occur, other than zooming? 

Have you had an opportunity to use your Mac in safe mode or a new user to see if the issue persists? We know that since the issue is intermittent that may take some time to test. 

How to use safe mode on your Mac

Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac

Thanks.

It looks like you never received a followup. I have the same issue, macbook pro 16" 2019 (non-m1).

It seems this is a known issue but apple repeatedly gives the same advice to everyone and it doesn't solve it.

Guest user, restart, try this, try that, all else fails swipe and reinstall OS, but no one can get a straight answer and all fixes are only temporary.

I would love to see a fresh updated response to this as well. This really messes up my photo editing work-flow. Had to resort to using keyboard shortcuts to save time.

For me, the issue happens in Photoshop, Acorn, sometimes even in preview.

Curser becomes non-responsive to pinch zoom in or zoom out, then will work again. Almost seems like it needs to be "reminded" to work properly. Sometimes the pinch zoom keeps responding as though I'm trying to select instead of zoom. I would guess that perhaps it was my hand placement on the pad, but before Monterey I had no issues with this at all. So it's not user error.

Apple, please help.

BTW, do you have three finger drag enabled?