Mouse selects everything on its own

Question

I have a strange problem that my mouse keeps selecting everything I point to. For example, if I open Rhythmbox, then at the top of the screen there is a text which says which song is playing. If I move my mouse over this text, then it will select this text; but I am not clicking.

This behaviour does not happen in all programs. For example in Firefox I have no problem at all. Maybe it is Gtk related? Nautilus also behaves strangely; I cannot open files by clicking on them, I have to select and make a box around the file and then press enter to open it. If I click, then nothing happens. Similar problems also happen with other Gtk software.

I think the problem might be related to touchscreen issues (I have a touchscreen). I run Gnome 3 on Ubuntu 12.04. I have a HP touchsmart 610 desktop computer. Any help is greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: I just did a fresh reinstall, and I am 90% certain that it is related to the touchscreen drivers. Here is what happens when I reinstall. At first boot, so exactly after install, everything works fine, except the touchscreen: The touchscreen does not respond. I update ubuntu, because I installed from an old CD (CD with ub. 12.04). Then on next reboot I have touchscreen working , but the working touchscreen comes together with the mouse selecting everything on its own.

SECOND QUESTION: Would anybody know how I could figure out what those touchscreen drivers are (so that I can disable them) ?

Try hitting escape a few times, our tapping your touchpad. I've had this at times when using my laptop with the touchpad-type mouse. Unfortunately, this may just be a bug. Try to find out if you can reliably reproduce it. — belacqua, May 27 '12 at 20:19
it is easy to reproduce, because it always happens with no exception. Go into the program, and Gnome will think I have my mouse clicked and select things I move over. — mnr, May 28 '12 at 08:52
You might try looking on launchpad for a similar bug. (You can see my profile for the 'how to report a bug' link, as well.) — belacqua, May 29 '12 at 18:36

Rasmus · Answer 1 · 2022-03-01T13:20:17.707

45

Touch your screen to make it stop.

I have the same problem on a touchscreen machine. It just happened now, and I decided to see if someone offered a solution. @mnr's mention that it might be touchscreen-related made me try: Touching the screen made the mouse stop auto-highlighting.

edited Mar 01 '22 at 13:20

answered Jan 15 '18 at 20:54

Rasmus

8,375

5

I used to get so frustrated, I'd save everything and reboot to resolve this issue! I finally found this, and yes, touching the screen "fixes" the problem (In Ubuntu 18.04 with Dell XPS 9560). Thanks, @Rasmus! – mightypile Oct 21 '18 at 02:52
2

I was suspecting a hardware issue on my 5 year old Lenovo Y70-70 Touch and after so many annoying reboots you saved my day, @Rasmus – Anbu Agarwal Apr 05 '20 at 08:44
2

This is Awesome. Laptop Asus UX501J with Touchscreen. Thanks! – Alexey Vol Aug 24 '20 at 19:27
3

Dell XPS15 and many reboots later, you'll save me some time, thanks ! – deathpote May 07 '21 at 16:29
2

In my case I had to use 2 fingers to touch the screen... – PascalVKooten Nov 17 '21 at 19:09
1

Simple solution, touch the screen. Love it. Saved me a couple of hours of going down a rabbit hole. – Tinashe Chinyanga Apr 12 '23 at 22:16

score 7 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 16 '18 at 03:16

7

Got to System Settings -> Universal Access -> Pointing and Clicking:

enter image description here

Make sure you have not activated Hover Click

edited Nov 16 '18 at 03:16

Nicolas Raoul

11,603

answered Sep 27 '12 at 10:53

Takkat

142,284

thanks for the idea, unfortunately hover click is not enabled. – mnr Sep 29 '12 at 09:33
so this is not the issue. I think it has something to do with touchscreen drivers – mnr Sep 29 '12 at 09:34
@meneer: driver or even hardware issue seems likely. I made the answer for people that may come here from the title ;) – Takkat Sep 29 '12 at 10:32
Hi Takkat. I just did a fresh reinstall, and I am 90% certain that it is related to the touchscreen drivers. Here is what happens when I reinstall. At first boot, so exactly after install, everything works fine, except the touchscreen: The touchscreen does not respond. I update ubuntu, because I installed from an old CD (CD with ub. 12.04). Then on next reboot I have touchscreen working , but the working touchscreen comes together with the mouse selecting everything on its own. – mnr Oct 09 '12 at 05:36
@Takkat: I had a similar problem in Ubuntu 16.04, and this solved my problem, thank you. – Oct 04 '16 at 22:32

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 16 '13 at 18:31

6

There is a bug in X and it's already reported. Sadly it took a while for them to realize that it's made by X.

edited Jan 16 '13 at 18:31

Eric Carvalho

54,385

answered Jan 16 '13 at 18:06

Tommy

84
1
1

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 26 '20 at 15:29

1

In my case, it was my mouse cord on top of the touchpad the one created the mayhem. It took me a shameful time to figure this out...

answered May 26 '20 at 15:29

Nico

111
2

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered May 27 '21 at 08:55

I experienced the same problem on Ubuntu 20.04 with a touchscreen. The solution proposed by Rasmus (touch the screen) solved the problem. If (like me) you don't use the touch screen without a pen, you can disable the "finger" part of it using the following command:

xinput disable "$( xinput list | grep -i Finger | sed '/Finger/s/^.*id=\([0-9]*\).*$/\1/' )"

(you can reenable it using the xinput enable command with the same argument)

Mouse selects everything on its own

5 Answers5

Touch your screen to make it stop.

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