Mouse scrolling causes random jumps

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1

Hi there,

I’ve been dealing with an incredibly annoying issue where, when scrolling down with my mouse’s wheel, the scroll will occasionally jump in the opposite direction. I tested the inputs from the mouse using xev to ensure it wasn’t a hardware issue causing the wrong direction to be sent which it was not. I found some other posts on the topic that recommended using imwheel but this did not fix the issue for me. Some other users recommended switching from libinput to evdev but I had a hard time disabling mouse acceleration on evdev so I didn’t test it long enough to see if the issue occurs with it. Does anyone have an idea what may be causing this issue? I have had it occur in both Qt and GTK applications.

Here are my specs:
Operating System: Manjaro Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.19.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.73.0
Qt Version: 5.15.0
Kernel Version: 5.8.3-2-MANJARO
OS Type: 64-bit
Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz
Memory: 15.6 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: GeForce GTX 1080 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

Also I’m using a Logitech G403 with libinput 1.16.1.

Thanks.

2

The same for me, after upgrade, 5.4.64-1-MANJARO Gnome.

3

I recently came across a video that recommended using a straw to blow air through the scroll wheel area of my mouse (Logitech G403). After doing that, I feel like it may have fixed the issue but I’m giving it some more time to test. The thing that confuses me is that if it was a hardware issue why was nothing appearing out of the ordinary when testing it with xev… Very strange situation.

4

As the other responders have said, I would suspect dust contamination (if an optical wheel indexer) or worn/oxidized contacts if a mechanical one.

The indexer packed up on my (now ancient) MS Mobile 3000 some time back … I did get it working for a bit longer by cleaning out the indexer but it barely registers at all now … just the odd intermittent (and unwanted) scrolling, mostly only downwards & the click doesn’t work reliably either.

Other mice still work fine in that respect (i.e. no “random jumping” when using the wheel) so test with another mouse if you can…