Recently a new system-wide misbehavior showed up on my Ubuntu 24.04 system, I presume as a result of a recent update. The system behaves as if the mouse wheel is constantly being scrolled down, but only on horizontally-scrollable areas. For example, with many tabs open in a browser, when the mouse pointer hovers over the tab area, the focus changes quickly from one tab to the next. Also, when hovering over the mouse speed adjuster (horzontal bar) in Settings, the adjuster moves to the right without any user intervention.
I tried a workaround using /etc/libinput/local-overrides.quirks file to disable horizontal scrolling, but it never worked. Finally, I resorted to using a batch file that uses xinput to turn off horizontal scrolling and setting it to automatically run on every startup via a .desktop file. However, I would really like to know more about this problemā¦ at least to me it is a problem. Was this change intentional? If not, has this bug been reported yet? Is there a better fix for it than what I am currently using?
If thereās more information needed, just ask and I will try to provide it.
Thanks for the suggestion. I forgot to mention that in my original post. I disconnected my usual wireless mouse and connected a corded USB mouse and the behavior wasnāt effected at allāhorizontal scroll areas still scrolled when the mouse pointer hovered over them, without any actual engagement of the mouse wheel.
Is there a wireless keyboard as well?
Did you look in ā/var/logsā ?
One user reported:
Unbelievable, but the problem was that my wireless keyboard and my wireless mouseās receivers were both on adjacent usb ports. when i moved my mouseās reciever to a further away port, I found that my mouse was not being weird any more, but my keyboard was acting funny. Turns out my keyboardās battery was running low and it was interfering with my mouse
Also bluetooth dongles have seen the same as the Quote above.
Move some around to different ports as a test.
Thank you, 1fallen, for your reply. I use a wireless keyboard and wireless mouse. I had wondered if the mouse batteries were low maybe causing anomalies, but replacing them didnāt help. I have not explored /var/logs yet. I hadnāt thought of the wireless keyboard as a potential factor. The keyboard dongle is in a USB port on the front and the mouse dongle is in a USB port in the back of the PC, so I wouldnāt think thatās the issue, but youāve given me some ideas to experiment with. Maybe Iāll try a different mouse and keyboard and see what happens. Iāve been using this wireless mouse and wireless keyboard for a year on this PC without issue. The weird scrolling behavior only appeared within the last few days after recent snap updates and āaptitude safe-upgradeā execution.
