Sometimes can't click on windows: new bug on 3 computers

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Issue resolved in Mutter 48.3.2

As of the Mutter hotfix, this bug no longer exists.

Old post from here.

So it seems like this problem has reached lots of computers, and RedHat will release a new hotfix of Mutter (that’s where the problem’s at) or maybe they’ll wait to fix it in the next standard release (48.4). The PR is merged and we’re waiting for a new release. Subscribe somehow to the releases page or run sudo dnf upgrade/rpm-ostree upgrade often.

As I understood from a Reddit post regarding this bug (go there for updates on this topic), because it’s the weekend, RedHat can’t release a hotfix right now. The solution as of June 1st is to downgrade Mutter (one-liner from the Reddit post):

sudo dnf in koji && cd $(mktemp -d) && pwd && koji download-build -a noarch -a $(uname -m) mutter-48.2-2.fc42 && sudo dnf in ./mutter-48.2-2.fc42.*.rpm ./mutter-common-48.2-2.fc42.noarch.rpm

For my Fedora Silverblue friends, this should solve it:

rpm-ostree deploy 42.20250526.0

Personally I still have problems with the command above, I can’t run it because of conflicting packages (it’s always Wine, of course).

I highly recommend reading the Reddit post because it’s very detailed and it’s kind of a FAQ (linking it again):

Oldest post from here.

This has happened on 3 computers as of now, which is 100% of the computers I’ve used Fedora on in the last 7 days. The bug has something to do with sometimes not being able to interact with any window in any workspace. The mouse gets detected from programs using global mouse, but you can’t focus or click on any window with a mouse.

Even though this happens inconsistently (this happens once every 3 minutes to 3 hours), you can still reproduce it by (sorry, the only reproducible procedure I found) opening Minecraft, switching workspaces, switching back to the first workspace and selecting Minecraft. Or just minimize the window. You can still look around (the mouse is locked), but when you open the inventory only the center inventory slot is selected. I’ve also noticed that it has a particular rectangle centered in the screen’s center in which the mouse can’t focus the window.

However, it’s more serious when you’re doing some kind of work; LibreOffice also glitches this way. Yesterday I had to restart it and Firefox several times because I couldn’t click on neither of the windows. But by opening a terminal window in another workspace, the problem is magically fixed: I can interact with all three windows with my mouse. But when I close the terminal, once again, the bug reappears.
Here’s a demonstration of this: (the mouse stays in the bottom-right despite me moving the mouse, but that bug is beyond what I’m reporting now)

Nothing in life is free - Markiplier
Video got erased from both Streamable and Jumpshare

Also, Viber sometimes glitches out and doesn’t draw the window, but it still opens and blocks apps below it from the mouse. In Overview, you can see only the ‘X’ and the Viber icon of the window.

Something common about Minecraft and LibreOffice is that they are coded with Java and I’m using the java-latest-openjdk package (tested both on Fedora Workstation and Silverblue), which might be the whole problem.

This is serious because restarting applications every hour is not something I want to do. This bug is probably going to be fixed in the following days because it’s new. This has never happened to me before.

Thanks for reading this, this is the only place I found where I can post about problems with my Fedora.

Edit: some information about the environment the bug appears on: both Wayland and Xorg, extensions:

  • AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem support
  • Blur my Shell
  • Desktop Cube
  • Caffeine
  • Clipboard Indicators
  • Removable Drive Menu
  • System Monitor
  • Color Picker
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This has been happening all day for me, too. Every 0-30 minutes… total productivity killer.
I thought it was problem with GoLand, but it is also breaking Steam.

This machine has been completely stable until recently, so a recent update is suspect.

The Java correlation might be significant.

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Same thing here, I’ve had it happen with Freetube, Obsidian and Brave Browser. Started occuring recently.

My specs, in case they are relevant:

System Details Report

Report details

  • Date generated: 2025-05-30 20:39:25

Hardware Information:

  • Hardware Model: ASRock A620M Pro RS WiFi
  • Memory: 32.0 GiB
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 5 9600X × 12
  • Graphics: AMD Radeon™ RX 7600
  • Graphics 1: AMD Radeon™ Graphics
  • Disk Capacity: 1.8 TB

Software Information:

  • Firmware Version: 3.06
  • OS Name: Fedora Linux 42.20250530.0 (Silverblue)
  • OS Build: (null)
  • OS Type: 64-bit
  • GNOME Version: 48
  • Windowing System: Wayland
  • Kernel Version: Linux 6.14.8-300.fc42.x86_64
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After going down a rabbit hole, I think it is related to the current mutter version. Rolling back to 42.20250526.0, which contains the previous version of mutter, fixed the issue for me.

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6

I am encountering the same issue for 2 days in one of my laptop. Ubuntu worked fine. But now this is getting weird.

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Hi there, I have a similar problem also, can’t click on firefox tabs hence cannot manage it, this happens also on Godot 4 (Where, other then the tabs, I can’t also move the viewport workspace). In other parts of the software it looks working fine.

when I run: sudo libinput debug-events

Everything looks working correctly and also, after using this command, everything start working again in all the above mentioned apps apparently. :face_in_clouds:

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I’ve been experiencing this as well. Some of the programs just don’t accept focus from the mouse after a while. Have to restart the app to make it work again. Observed it in VSCode, Edge and multiple Jetbrains products.

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Just ran sudo dnf downgrade mutter-48.1-1.fc42 mutter-common-48.1-1.fc42. Will report back tomorrow if that does remove the issue.

If anybody already opened a bug report, please link a ticket. :slight_smile:

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Having the same issue, downgrading mutter helped.

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Thank you everyone for responding.
I’ve noticed a pattern in which parts are unclickable of windows. Turns out if you open or resize a window everything’s fine, but when you close a window that’s when an unclickable part appears where the frame of the window was.
Also, how can I downgrade it on Fedora Silverblue? I’ve never downgraded a package on Silverblue and I can’t find how to on Google (and I searched about override and replace on rpm-ostree man page)

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Hi, see this thread. This is a critical bug affecting many people using GNOME.

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Bottom of the page. Obviously change the fedora version to 42, since the example commands are using 41.

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Hello,
Have the same problem on:
VERSION=“42 (Workstation Edition)”
RELEASE_TYPE=stable
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=42

Brave browser unresponsive, Signal (flatpak package) window not showing/unresponsive at times etc … etc …
Downgrading the mutter package helped, thank you very much!!!

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I updated the post to feature the Reddit link. Thanks for bringing it to this discussion! It has every info you for this issue.

1 Like