Unreliable Mouse Clicking - 10-30% of left clicks not detected

Support
1

Hello!
I have been using Manjaro Linux with the KDE desktop environment for about 1.5 years now.
Recently (starting about a week ago) the left click of my mouse has stopped working reliably.
Every left click has a chance to be completely missed by the system. It does not follow a particular pattern, but I would estimate that 10-30 percent of times I left click, it just does not register the click.
What I have tried so far:

  • using 3 different mouses from different hardware vendors. All of them show the issue of unreliable clicking
  • I tried all 3 mouses on my 2 Windows laptops, both do not show this behavior
  • I used sudo evtest to check which events are received from the mouse. A percentage of clicks that I physically perform does not show up there.
  • rebooted the system multiple times
  • tried 3 different USB ports of my device, all of them show the issue for a connected mouse.

Corollaries:

  • I can’t recall a specific event when this started, but I update my system regularly with sudo pacman -Syyu.
  • My feeling tells me that the way I tap the mouse has an effect. If I click angrily and very hard my “perceived” chance of success that the click goes through seems to be way higher (maybe 95%), though this could be pure imagination.
  • It seems to get slighly worse whenever the machine is doing a lot of work or has a lot of windows open. But this could also be imagination.

Does anyone have an idea what could be going on here?
Any advice what I should check to solve this problem?

2

How old are the mice?

It sounds like the switches are on the way out (eg. the spring in the microswitch has stretched too much to reliably activate), but these three points don’t quite match up.

Are you sure you tested thoroughly enough on windows?

Have you cleaned them? There could be something preventing the buttons from reliably activating, also check the USB connectors and sockets for dirt and loose connections.

Does it only happen with the left button, on all 3 mice?

Have you tried different kernels?

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3

If it is just left click, you could try switching to left-handed mode to use the right button instead, to confirm whether the same issue persists or whether it is actually the mice having worn switches.

Pro tip: enable single click; your mouse will live much longer!

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4

Please, check output of dmesg and try other kernels.

5

I have similar issues from time to time - using a Razor Lancehead mouse.

My issues stems from how my mouse is constructed - and it is always the left button that is affected.

The plastic slowly changes shape so the tip of button reaches the exterior before the switch is activated.

I use a hairdryer to heat the plastic slightly - just enough to bend it back into a shape that allowes the switch to be activated correctly.

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