Mouse pointer does not adjust to context on screen

Question

My mouse pointer does not change shape depending on what's under it on the screen. Strangely, this seems to happen only in Firefox and Chrome, but maybe I simply haven't noticed this problem in other apps. For example, when I load a new page in Firefox and the pointer is in the address bar, it changes to a text cursor, i.e., a vertical bar. Then I can move it all over the window, and it does not change when the mouse is passing over links, buttons, etc. Other times it can change to a hand or an arrow and then again it does not react to its context. In Chrome it happened before that when the pointer passed over the window edge it turned into a double arrow and then stayed this way regardless of its position, but I can't reproduce this at the moment. This happens often but is sometimes hard to reproduce exactly.

In other programs programs the pointer seems to behave normally. For example, in gedit it's a vertical bar inside the window and an arrow over the title bar or menu. In yelp (help application) the cursor is a vertical bar over text, an arrow over empty space and a hand over links. The pointer changes into an arrow when it leaves Firefox or Chrome and then stays this way when it is moved back inside.

In Chrome and Firefox I have fresh profiles without any customization or addons. I am using Ubuntu 19.04 with Wayland and Yaru theme for applications, cursor and icons in gnome-tweaks, but the issue seems to occur in other themes as well.

Edit. It seems that this is a Wayland issue because it does not happen when I log in using X11.

Answer 1

I have the same problem with Firefox 80.0.1 on Ubuntu 20.04.1 since two days. For testing I also installed Chrome which shows the same behavior. As long as I can say, no other programs seem to be affected. The mouse cursor often is stuck in its last state, mostly resize when moved into the window, but sometimes other cursors also. No matter if it is an arrow or another curser, it doesn't change on mouseOver on Webpages e.g. above links or in input boxes. Rebooting and changing the mouse don't solve the problem.

The perpetrator seems to be the Gnome extension "Soft brightness". Maybe the alpha-layer it puts over the screen to darken it interferes with the layer the browsers operate on and the layers the mouse is working on. Disabling this extension seems to solve the problem.

Answer 2

I had the same issue, fixed by disabling and reactivating all Gnome extensions with gnome-tweaks.

I'm using Gnome 3.38.5 with Wayland on Debian 11.
Firefox-ESR, Firefox Nightly and Vscode was affected.

See also: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1699942

Answer 3

I had the same issue. This particularly occurs when you use the accessibility function to either zoom in or zoom out on the screen. I am using Ubuntu 22.04. After i turned off the function the cursor started working fine. Alt + super + 8 is the shortcut key in my case.

Answer 4

I'm using GNOME Shell 43.9 with Wayland on Debian 12. This issue seems (at least in my case) to be a side effect of the Soft Brightness Plus extension.

The only thing that worked for me was disable Mouse cursor brightness control.

The negative point of this is to have a very bright mouse cursor when the screen is darker...

Answer 5

I'm also on Gnome/Wayland 43.9 on Debian 12 and was having this issue in many places (Firefox, Chrome, Synaptic and other applications; the cursor also wouldn't change when trying to resize windows). After verifying that this doesn't happen when booting a Debian 12.6 live image, I discovered that it happens when I enable zoom in Gnome's accessibility settings. This is a known issue. I had left zoom enabled at 1.00 magnification (no zoom) so that I could adjust zoom with a keyboard shortcut when needed, a convenient feature I've always had in XFCE/Xorg with a simple setup. Instead I turned off zoom, left magnification at 2.00 and now I'm using the default shortcut to toggle zoom on and off, but this is more cumbersome.