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I have an issue, which I saw only on Firefox : after some time (or some event which I haven't identified yet), Firefox does not react to my mouse movement events

meaning :

  • when hovering over an HTML item, it does not highlight/change appearance even if it is supposed to do so,
  • when hovering over a clickable item, the cursor does not change,
  • when hovering over selectable text, the cursor does not change,
  • tooltips do not appear,
  • etc ...

if I trigger other GUI events (if I click, or if I press a keyboard key), then the GUI reacts (cursor changes, tooltips appear, animations get triggered ...), a bit as if, by handling that other event, firefox realized "oh, the cursor is actually there", but with no external event, my mousenter/mouseleave events seem to be ignored, or stalled.

Running Ubuntu 22.10 (kinetic), and regular firefox snap install (my current version: 108.0.1).

Does anyone have a similar issue ?

[edit] I opened an issue on launchpad, if any of you care to bring more details to it:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/2006468

LeGEC
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    Annoys me for a few weeks already, using the binary package (not snap) on 22.04, happens since updating to 108.0. Did not find any other post mentioning it last time I searched and thought it was a my-computer issue, now it looks like an our-computers issue … – Simon A. Eugster Jan 10 '23 at 12:47
  • Not sure if related, I have DisplayLink drivers installed. – Simon A. Eugster Jan 10 '23 at 12:49
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    Same issue. When I switched from Wayland to Xorg it went away.. – L3viathan Jan 12 '23 at 16:00
  • @L3viathan: did you switch back to Xorg even on 22.10 ? I have several colleagues running firefox on Ubuntu 22.10 and they don't have this issue. – LeGEC Jan 12 '23 at 16:46
  • @LeGEC I'm actually on 22.04 LTS, but other than that it's the exact same issue. – L3viathan Jan 15 '23 at 21:50
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    I have the exact same symptoms running Firefox 109 on Arch Linux under Wayland. So it's definitely not Ubuntu-related. – aeno Feb 07 '23 at 09:19
  • Did 112.0(.2) fix it? I have not had the problem for quite some time now. – Simon A. Eugster May 08 '23 at 04:32
  • … nope. Just got too used to it. Still in 112.0.2 – Simon A. Eugster May 08 '23 at 10:15
  • @SimonA.Eugster: meh ... sorry to hear that. Did you try the MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 suggest in the answer ? I hadn't returned to this question, but it works for me. – LeGEC May 08 '23 at 10:36
  • @LeGEC Yes, did not change anything, but I'm not sure if the variable is applied correctly when I start Firefox, I'm using a shortcut from the desktop environment. I'll test again with Firefox started from command line. – Simon A. Eugster May 09 '23 at 12:36
  • Pretty sure i've been having the same (intermittent) experience all these months (and still happening with the latest Debian GNU/Linux trixie/sid,Gnome 44.5, Wayland.) One additional note though: If i hover over an element that should have a response, and then i press the control key, the interaction works as expected. (Like pressing control tells Firefox to check the mouse.) It almost feels like an accessibility feature that gets toggled mysteriously.) Is this the same bug for other people, is pressing control to activate the expected tooltip, dropdown etc a 'workaround' for you also? – mlncn Nov 22 '23 at 19:03
  • Reading comprehension update, the original post makes exactly the same point about pressing control or any other key to trigger it, yeah i have exactly the same thing. – mlncn Nov 22 '23 at 23:48

2 Answers2

7

This issue is also discussed in Firefox mouseover errors after upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04

My suggested solution is the following:

There's a bugticket for Firefox (Bugticket). If you force Firefox to use Wayland by adding MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 to ~/.profile hover should work as expected.

aprilunge
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2

The only way that worked reliably for me was to add it to the desktop launcher. Exporting it globally didn't seem to work.

Copy the desktop shortcut to ~/.local/share/applications/firefox.desktop

Then edit it and add "env MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1" in all the Exec= lines. Example:

Exec=firefox %u

becomes

Exec=env MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 firefox %u

To verify that it worked, look for Window Protocol in about:support. It must say wayland. If it says xwayland, then you missed a step.

A note from past experience: if Firefox is pinned to your dashboard you have to un-pin it, restart it and pin it back in order to pick up the changes.

Sources:

Emilio
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  • +1 for the detailed explanations. In my setup however, adding export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 to my ~/.profile worked. – LeGEC Aug 11 '23 at 07:31
  • Thanks! I'm on fedora, so it is was probably different. I can see the variable set when starting a new shell, but it does not change the "Window Protocol" in about:support. I was only able to get it right after editing the .desktop file. – Emilio Aug 11 '23 at 08:13