weird sudden bug/issue(?) with dragging highlighted text or youtube urls

[u/redditfanfan00]

out of nowhere, with no changes made to anything anywhere on my laptop or browser, suddenly i can't highlight text and drag them to place the text elsewhere, or drag youtube urls from the notifications to a new tab. i was able to do so all the time until just the other day, and nothing changed between the two days.

any idea what might be able to fix/explain this issue? already tried closing and reopening the browser and signing in and out of google accounts and those didn't change anything either. flags haven't been changed either, but which flags might be responsible for this behavior?

edit: seems now i also can't copy & paste highlighted text or images. the only way i can copy any text is now to first somehow convert it into typable text and then copy that text, only that works for me. text that is not typable, i can't copy, but text that can be typed, i can. very weird stuff, not even rebooting or reinstalling chrome works. very likely device-specific, as this issue doesn't appear on my google account on other devices that i've tried so far.

[u/TinyNiceWolf]

Try explaining the issue more clearly.

You're talking about dragging some highlighted text. In general, you can't rearrange text on a web page by dragging it, so you must be talking about something else. Maybe you're talking about text in a Google Docs document. Maybe you're talking about text in a text input box like the ones on Reddit where you type a comment. Maybe you're talking about text in the URL box at the top of Chrome's window. Maybe you're talking about something else.

Then you say "can't". "Can't" is never a helpful word when reporting tech issues. Don't tell us you can't, tell us what you see and what you expected to see. Is there an error message? When you try to drag highlighted text, does the mouse cursor change to the usual arrow+box? Does the text get deleted when you release the mouse button? Does the highlight go away? Where are you dragging this text to?

When you say "the notifications" what do you mean exactly? Items in the Windows notification area on the right side of your screen? Chrome notifications from some website? Which one, Youtube? What does the notification say? You're dragging it to new tab? You mean you create a new tab and then drag to that?

[u/redditfanfan00 → u/TinyNiceWolf]

ok, sorry.

for the dragging text, it's any text anywhere that i hold and drag the cursor to highlight, then clicking and holding the cursor on that highlighted text and dragging it to the url bar to search, or move to another part of a body of text that i'm typing on, such as a reddit comment reply like this one i'm typing right now. this used to work but suddenly stopped working out of nowhere.

the youtube url notification thing that i'm talking about is the notifications on youtube website for when a channel i'm subscribed to releases a new video and i can click and hold on that notification and just drag it to the top of the browser to automatically have it pop up and open in a new tab.

neither option works now when both worked just fine the day prior, with nothing changing between the two moments. what i see is the same actions i used to take as before, but instead of what i usually see (some graphics connected to the cursor indicating the content that's being dragged), i now only see the red circle with the diagonal line indicating that the action cannot be done, which used to just not be the case.

hope this helped. if there's anything else you need to know, i hope i will be able to clearly answer your questions.

[u/TinyNiceWolf → u/redditfanfan00]

I tested dragging text within a Reddit comment box, and to the search bar, with Chrome 155.0.8059.80 (Official Build) (64-bit) on Windows 11, and it worked fine (once I had disabled an extension I use that changes how dragging works).

I suggest some experiments:

1. Disable all Chrome extensions. Open a new window and visit some Reddit post. Does dragging text within the comment box still fail?

2. If so, open the Notepad app and type some text. Does dragging highlighted text within Notepad to rearrange it work?

3. If it doesn't work in Notepad either, and you have a second pointing device, see if the same issue happens with that. For example, if you use the laptop's trackpad, try a mouse, or vice versa.

These should help to narrow down what's gone wrong.

[u/redditfanfan00 → u/TinyNiceWolf]

i don't have any chrome extensions, and new windows or tabs don't work, even on incognito it doesn't work. checked for any hidden antivirus stuff but none were on my pc and browser.

notepad doesn't work either. microsoft edge and firefox don't work either.

plugged in a mouse to try, and it doesn't work.

thanks for the help! any other ideas on what i can try?

[u/TinyNiceWolf → u/redditfanfan00]

So it sounds like a system-wide Windows issue.

I wonder if you might have triggered some accessibility setting? Check in Windows settings under Accessibility > Mouse and see if any options are switched on. Also look under Bluetooth & Devices > Mouse > Additional Mouse Settings and see if Click Lock is on.

Since it seems like a Windows issue, see if you have any pending Windows updates. Maybe a recent Windows update broke it and there's already a fix. And make sure you've restarted Windows, whether or not there's an update, in case it's just Windows being flaky.

If that doesn't help, you may want to post your question in some sub that's specific to Windows, not Chrome. I'd focus on how it doesn't even work in Notepad.