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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 problem… 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 there’s more information needed, just ask and I will try to provide it.

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Moving to the Support and Help category.

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I would try another mouse first.

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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 wasn’t effected at all–horizontal scroll areas still scrolled when the mouse pointer hovered over them, without any actual engagement of the mouse wheel.

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Is there a wireless keyboard as well?
Did you look in ‘/var/logs’ ?
One user reported:

Unbelievable, but the problem was that my wireless keyboard and my wireless mouse’s receivers were both on adjacent usb ports. when i moved my mouse’s 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 keyboard’s 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.

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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 didn’t help. I have not explored /var/logs yet. I hadn’t 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 wouldn’t think that’s the issue, but you’ve given me some ideas to experiment with. Maybe I’ll try a different mouse and keyboard and see what happens. I’ve 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 “aptitude safe-upgrade” execution.

1 Like
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A different mouse worked for me. Swapped one from my other lappy. :slight_smile: