Windows snapping and Excel for Mac lags

Bugs or Unexpected Behavior
1

Hi,

I'm experiencing severe input lag in MS Excel for Mac (currently v16.110.1, but it also occurred on at least 1 older version) that turns out to be caused by BetterTouchTool's window snapping. With snapping enabled, Excel delays a large share of user input - every click, drag, column resize, cell operation, and others are delayed for several seconds. It affects every workbook regardless of size, content, or save location (I've tried local and OneDrive).

I've narrowed it down from Excel's own logs in ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Library/Logs/Diagnostics/EXCEL, captured before/after toggling the feature:

  • snapping on: Excel logged ~2180 Office.Excel.Accessibility.NotificationSinkHrProcess events in about 24 seconds and an ExcelUserInputDelay of 7 delayed out of 12 input events
  • snapping fully off: those drop to 0 notifications and 1 delayed out of 48

I've tried both resizing modes (Use Classic BetterTouchTool Resizing and Integrate With Native System Resizing), and both produce the same issue. Only completely disabling window snapping clears it.

I have no Excel-specific BTT triggers configured.

Device information:

  • Type of Mac: MacBook Pro M3 Max
  • macOS version: macOS 26.5.1
  • BetterTouchTool version: 6.506 (via SetApp)

The issue seems similar to this one Severe typing lag and dropped keystrokes with BetterTouchTool / macOS text monitoring enabled , but specifically for Excel for Mac. I don't notice any lag in other apps.

2

Unfortunately that is probably a bug in Excel's Accessibility implementation. These can not be solved in BTT. (However I just tried and it seems to work fine here, maybe it is some Excel plugin or similar?)

You can disable BTT window snapping for Excel:

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3

I don't have any add-ins/plugins in Excel. But your suggestion helped. Taking it as a workaround for now, but at least I can use snapping for other apps.

Thank you very much.