Comment 97 for bug 1181666

Since yesterday I am also massively affected by this issue (Ubuntu 19.04, Dell Latitude 7280). The mouse buttons 'stop working' every few minutes, making working for me very tiresome.

The only gnome extensions I have active are the frippery move clock, system monitor and desktop icons.

Shortly before I installed/updated the following packages:

evolution-plugins-experimental:amd64 <none> 3.32.1-2
libgmime-2.6-0:amd64 <none> 2.6.23+dfsg1-4
pan:amd64 <none> 0.145-1
libgmime-2.6-0:amd64 2.6.23+dfsg1-4
mime-support:all 3.60ubuntu1
hicolor-icon-theme:all 0.17-2
gnome-menus:amd64 3.32.0-1ubuntu1
libc-bin:amd64 2.29-0ubuntu2
man-db:amd64 2.8.5-2
desktop-file-utils:amd64 0.23-4ubuntu1

Maybe that is related, maybe the bug was dormant before, I do not know.

Today, investigating the bug I noticed the following:
* if the bug happens while the mouse is still over an item that can register a mouse click, I can still press the mouse button and the click will be registered.
* I can still cycle the windows with alt-tab and the newly selected window will get the keyboard input, but the old window that was active when the bug happens will still get the mouse click.
* if the bug happens when I click on the dock, then the mouse carries with it the program icon from the dock, and if I press "Esc" then to stop that, mouse seem not to do anything
* "gnome-shell -r" helps for a few minutes, sometimes waiting a minute doing nothing helps, sometimes switching to console and back helps for a few minutes.
* no hardware problem. Mouse works fine on a mac, touchpad shows the same issues as the mouse on ubuntu.

Or, maybe more importantly to understand where the bug is coming from:

* just right now it happened again. I can still use the mouse only inside this edit window inside the html page rendered in firefox to select with double clicks or move the cursor, but if I click on other links or buttons in this firefox window nothing happens, not even in this same page. If I alt-tab to another window and click inside this edit box, I can move the cursor and select, but all keyboard input goes to the other window I selected by alt-tab. To continue writing here I need to alt-tab again to firefox. right-click does not seem to work though, only left-click.
* using xdotool I see that mouse position and window get updated when I move the mouse

So, to my untrained eye it seems it is a problem with selecting the correct item to send the mouse clicks to, because the clicks still get registered but are received by the wrong item on the screen (sorry for probably not using the correct terms here). It seems that when the bug happens the item that was under the mouse cursor at that time stays the one that receives the clicks independent of where the mouse cursor is. If that item does not react to mouse clicks or already has reacted (like the dock) it seems to the user that the mouse button is not working.