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I have a strange problem that my mouse keeps selecting everything I point to. For example, if I open Rhythmbox, then at the top of the screen there is a text which says which song is playing. If I move my mouse over this text, then it will select this text; but I am not clicking.

This behaviour does not happen in all programs. For example in Firefox I have no problem at all. Maybe it is Gtk related? Nautilus also behaves strangely; I cannot open files by clicking on them, I have to select and make a box around the file and then press enter to open it. If I click, then nothing happens. Similar problems also happen with other Gtk software.

I think the problem might be related to touchscreen issues (I have a touchscreen). I run Gnome 3 on Ubuntu 12.04. I have a HP touchsmart 610 desktop computer. Any help is greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: I just did a fresh reinstall, and I am 90% certain that it is related to the touchscreen drivers. Here is what happens when I reinstall. At first boot, so exactly after install, everything works fine, except the touchscreen: The touchscreen does not respond. I update ubuntu, because I installed from an old CD (CD with ub. 12.04). Then on next reboot I have touchscreen working , but the working touchscreen comes together with the mouse selecting everything on its own.

SECOND QUESTION: Would anybody know how I could figure out what those touchscreen drivers are (so that I can disable them) ?

mnr
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5 Answers5

46

Touch your screen to make it stop.

I have the same problem on a touchscreen machine. It just happened now, and I decided to see if someone offered a solution. @mnr's mention that it might be touchscreen-related made me try: Touching the screen made the mouse stop auto-highlighting.

Rasmus
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7

Got to System Settings -> Universal Access -> Pointing and Clicking:

enter image description here

Make sure you have not activated Hover Click

Nicolas Raoul
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Takkat
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6

There is a bug in X and it's already reported. Sadly it took a while for them to realize that it's made by X.

Eric Carvalho
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Tommy
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1

In my case, it was my mouse cord on top of the touchpad the one created the mayhem. It took me a shameful time to figure this out...

Nico
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1

I experienced the same problem on Ubuntu 20.04 with a touchscreen. The solution proposed by Rasmus (touch the screen) solved the problem. If (like me) you don't use the touch screen without a pen, you can disable the "finger" part of it using the following command:

xinput disable "$( xinput list | grep -i Finger | sed '/Finger/s/^.*id=\([0-9]*\).*$/\1/' )"

(you can reenable it using the xinput enable command with the same argument)

anmorand
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