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rafrsr
Asked: 2017-07-11 13:50:00 +0800 CST

Mouse cursor gets stuck in "drag and drop" mode

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I have exactly the following issue with Ubuntu 17.04 (Gnome shell and desktop installed)

When clicking on the Bookmark root or on one of the bookmarks below the mouse cursor gets stuck in "drag n drop" mode, blocking all keyboard entry and also mouse clicks for the the whole GUI (systemwide).

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rapidsvn/+bug/402892

It`s a very old issue but without any concrete solution.

And happen not only in nautilus, others applications like kid3, KDE Connect, Kdenlive, Notes and others are affected. In many places of these applications a simple click stuck in "drag & drop" mode, is impossible to work with this problem, is very annoying.

Any idea or solution is welcome.

gnome

2 Answers

  1. For me, opening a terminal window and running pkill nautilus fixes it temporarily.

    (But I don't know how to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place.)

    • 21

  2. I have experienced this sticky drag-and-drop bug over many Ubuntu versions, currently 20.04, but it seems to be very old (see launchpad). If you have a touchscreen or tablet it is very likely to be involved in the bug. If so, you should be able to temporarily fix by hitting ESC to get your mouse pointer back, then at a command line, if the id of your touchscreen/tablet is 12 for example, type:

    xinput --disable 12
xinput --enable 12

    You can find a list of the ids of your input devices by typing just xinput. For example on my Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro laptop:

    xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Synaptics TM2714-001                      id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ATML1000:00 03EB:8A10                     id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ PixArt USB Optical Mouse                  id=14   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ ...

    Most people notice the bug when every click on a nautilus bookmark puts the system into drag-and-drop mode. For me, another repeatable symptom affects LibreOffice Calc. Once the bug has been triggered, if you click-select a worksheet tab or drag-select a set of cells then release the mouse, it also becomes stuck in drag-and-drop mode, and (strangely) draws a thick border around the selection, which you cannot undo or reformat.

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