I'm facing this same issue in macOS 26 (Tahoe), almost two years after the last activity on this thread.
Out of pure luck, I discovered that if you set the button style to .buttonStyle(.borderless) then the button becomes clickable. I have no idea why that works and the other button styles don't.
By the way, I don't have this problem on the iPad, using the same code. The buttons are clickable there.
Does anybody have any other tips on how to have a custom, clickable toolbar in the safe area when using NavigationSplitView? I still want the system toolbar visible in the sidebar, but I want to have my own UI in the top edge of the detail view.