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I have a new XPS 13 9670 with Ubuntu 18.04.

A bunch of applications often (but not always) think I'm dragging. For example, when using GNote and my house hovers over my list of notes, it will attempt to drag it.

I have this with a number of applications. The Telegram desktop application too, but oddly enough not every application. Could this be a hardware problem, or is it something I can fix in software?

Evert
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    There is an accessibility feature that does exactly that, but I'm not sure how it is called (drag-lock maybe?). Please check your accessibility settings. This question may be helpful. – danzel Aug 29 '18 at 13:03
  • Hi @danzel! Thanks for the suggestion. I took a lock at the Drag Lock feature via xinput. It does seem to be disabled for me. – Evert Aug 29 '18 at 13:14
  • Using dconf I found a setting called /org/gnome/desktop/peripherals/touchpad/tap-and-drag which was enabled, I wonder if this causes it. – Danny Varod Mar 05 '20 at 11:32
  • I have a way to reproduce this in one standard program. Using the "Files", in Ubuntu 18.04. I do have a touchscreen enabled (which I don't use), mouse pad is enabled (which I don't touch neither) and there's a bluetooth mouse.

    So, I click on any of the "bookmarks" (the shortcuts on the left side of Files) and try to move the mouse away - and it starts dragging it. Then I have to hit ESC to stop dragging. If I click ANY other, regular folder in Files, it will NOT do the drag. It doesn't happen always, but when it starts it sticks. Also, I had it in PhpStorm, while editing code.

     – userfuser Oct 06 '22 at 13:09

3 Answers3

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I had the same issue in multiple applications including Okular, Eagle etc. I accidentally discovered that it might be related to the touchscreen. While in the 'dragging mode' in Okular, I could get out by simply tapping on the touchscreen once. I then experimented by explicitly touching the screen (and not taking my finger off) and immediately, the pointer started dragging. I suspect one possible cause for the behavior is spurious touch detects without the corresponding release being detected.

user191801
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    Although it didn't solve my problem, this exactly explains what happened to me. I wasn't really using the touchscreen so I turned it off (sadly) which completely eliminated this. When a solution comes along on askubuntu.com I'll give the 'solved' flag to the new answer, but this was helpful until then. Thank you. – Evert Nov 19 '18 at 18:07
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    Thank you! It was the touchscreen for me too. For the record, you can get the name of input devices with xinput list and add this to your ~/.xprofile file to disable it: xinput set-prop $ID 'Device Enabled' 0 – Tobia Jun 10 '19 at 20:38
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    I know you're not supposed to make "thank you!" comments but.... THANK YOU! I've been having this for SO LONG and the only way to resolve this I knew was to reboot. This is such a relief! In fact let me scrap together some reputation as a thank you! – Christian Apr 01 '20 at 13:27
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I had the same issue on an inspiron 2-in-1: after using my pen, it kept dragging on click until rebooting. I'd also been looking at other desktop environments/window managers and switching to Awesome WM solved the problem. So for me it seems to be something specific to Gnome.

Edit: Actually, it recurred again. However, restarting the device did work. So now I have in my bashrc an alias like this:

alias penfix="xinput disable 'pointer:ELAN2097:00 04F3:274E' && xinput enable 'pointer:ELAN2097:00 04F3:274E'"

Of course, if you want to do this, replace the name with whatever your device is called. Then I just run penfix when it gets messed up and it fixes it.

user3231511
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My memories about are not so fresh any more, but on 16.04 I had this; only while using the vector-graphics app Inkscape.

There was a specific task or procedure in Inkscape (I don't remember what) which triggered this state, and I could even reproduce this problem quite reliably.

Surprisingly, it had to do something with the presence of an external USB keyboard (this all happened on a laptop). So as far as I remember, the solution was to unplug the USB keyboard, wait a little, then re-plug.

Levente
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