Firefox buttons/address bar becomes unclickable (using GNOME + Wayland)

Support Software & Applications
1

In the last few days, after some minutes of usage, parts of Firefox become unclickable:

  • I can still click on tabs to change tabs.
  • The site content is still completely responsive.
  • When hovering over the cross button to close a tab, it changes appearance as it should. Clicking the button does nothing.
  • Clicking on the address bar does nothing.
  • Cannot click on back, forward, refresh buttons.
  • Cannot click on any add-ons.
  • Cannot click on preferences.
  • Can click on the button to open a new tab. There, I can enter an address. Once the page has loaded, address bar becomes unclickable again.
  • Bookmarks toolbar is still working as expected.
  • Keyboard shortcuts (ctrl+t, ctrl-w, ctrl-l) still work as expected.
  • When I launch a new window via ctrl+n, all buttons work as expected in the new window, while the old window remains unclickable.
  • The “button freeze” appears to occur randomly. I cannot reproduce it intentionally. I am also quite certain I’m not running out of memory (the system monitor in my system tray is on and it occurs even when my memory usage is below 50%).

What I’ve tried:

  • Updating firefox: This happened on both firefox 138.0.1 and now on 138.0.1-1
  • As suggested on the mozilla support site, I downloaded the latest Firefox (138.0.3) directly from Mozilla and worked with it. The issue still occurs.
  • I launched firefox in troubleshooting mode, disabling all extensions. The issue still occurs.

The system I’m using:

❯ lsb_release -sirc                                                                                                                             
ManjaroLinux 25.0.2 Zetar

Firefox:

❯ firefox --version                                                                                                                             
Mozilla Firefox 138.0.1
❯ firefox --full-version                                                                                                                        
Mozilla Firefox 138.0.1 20250501114137 20250501114137

GNOME version:

❯ gnome-shell --version     
GNOME Shell 48.1

Using Wayland:

❯ loginctl show-session 1     
Id=1
User=1000
Name=XXXXXXXXX
Timestamp=Thu 2025-05-15 17:52:44 BST
TimestampMonotonic=17394077
VTNr=2
Seat=seat0
TTY=tty2
Remote=no
Service=gdm-autologin
Scope=session-1.scope
Leader=1321
Audit=1
Type=wayland
Class=user
Active=yes
State=active
IdleHint=no
IdleSinceHint=0
IdleSinceHintMonotonic=0
CanIdle=yes
CanLock=yes
LockedHint=no

I don’t know what else to look into to diagnose and fix this issue, please advise. I’m happy to provide more details if you tell me what you’d like to see.

Somebody on the mozilla support site mentioned they’re having the same issue on Fedora and Wayland, so admittedly this may not be a manjaro specific issue. If that makes it inappropriate to remain on this forum, please let me know.

2

A user on the mozilla support site linked in the question reported that they can reliably reproduce the issue by clicking on a tab and dragging it around a bit.

While I am unable to cause the buttons freeze issue this way, it appears that once they are frozen, I can unfreeze them by doing just that - clicking on a tab and dragging it around a little.

1 Like
3

I only encountered the issue once yesterday, which I fixed by closing & restarting Firefox. The next time it happens, I’ll try your suggestion.

4

This seems to be a problem that was introduced with (I think) Firefox 138. Downgrading to 137 seems to solve it. Not exactly ideal, but apparently all there is until it’s fixed upstream.

5

Seems to be a bug in Firefox, not specific to Manjaro/Arch, and has already been reported upstream in Mozilla’s Bugzilla:

In another report (now closed as duplicate of 1955112) the descriptions are pretty close to what is mentioned in this thread.