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My main account has an issue that it is constantly stuck in the drag mode (hand icon). Whenever I click anything other than the top menu it produces a hand icon and starts to drag it. I can even now click Conky widgets and drag them around the screen which I couldn't do before.

I was using the tweak tool at the time but I don't think I changed anything that would do this.

I have tried to restart the PC but it persists. However, the guest account works just fine. Any ideas on how I can fix this?

UPDATE: I have found the cause of the issue. It can be reproduced in the Guest account by opening tweak tool and going to "Windows" -> "Window Action Key" and setting the value to "Disabled". Is there any way I can set this value back to "Alt" by using the terminal and fixing my main account?

Matt Stafford
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7 Answers7

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In my case I knew which program had caused the mouse cursor to 'freeze up'. I was using Archive Manager to drag and drop an image out of a zip file when I got the hand icon. Tried the other answers here without luck.

What worked for me was Alt-Tabbing to activate the application then press Alt-F4 to close the program window. Once the window closed, my mouse cursor returned to normal.

0x574F4F54
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5

I fixed this myself by changing the setting in the terminal.

Open a new terminal with CTRL + Alt + T and enter:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences mouse-button-modifier "'<Alt>'"
vanadium
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Matt Stafford
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4

On Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy running

pkill nautilus

Unfroze the mouse icon.

PHZ.fi-Pharazon
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0

I had the same problem. In tweak tool I somehow managed to reach Windows through Keyboard Tab and the changed the Windows Action Key to Alt. Hope it helps.

Aniket Deo
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0

I had this issue while dragging and dropping files from Archive Manager for me alt+tab was working but when I tried the below none of them worked:
alt+f4
alt+q

The following commands have worked for me is:
pidof file-roller
kill -9 ID_FROM_LAST_STEP

-9 is for killing the process immediately

Sam Kaz
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0

The problem is the action/Windows that is being activated by itselft somehow, by software or hardware malfunctioning.

Diego Alves
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0

On Lubuntu (LXQt), killing lxqt-panel can sometimes fix this problem.

pkill lxqt-panel
Andrew Tapia
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