Arch Linux

dgalt

Member

Registered: 2015-04-22

Posts: 52

Odd Horizontal Scrolling Issue in Chrome / Chromium

I recently starting running Arch on my laptop (lenovo T470), which has exposed me to some quirks that I haven't experience on my desktop.

One such quirk is this odd scrolling issue I experience in either Chromium or Google Chrome. I'm not sure how to describe it, other than to say that the browser seem to allow for horizontal scrolling where there should be none.

I took two screen captures to illustrate what I'm experiencing. This first one is taken with Chrome, the second one is taken with Firefox (which doesn't have this issue).

Chrome: https://youtu.be/CyLJqH0U-pM

Firefox: https://youtu.be/LXtoC9jtOU4

This doesn't happen with every website - in fact, it doesn't happen with most. It's rather annoying in my case, though, since it does happen in the labels portion of Gmail (shown in a dummy account in the videos), so I end up encountering this a lot. I'll randomly come across a website where this happens, though, and it's quite annoying.

For the example the labels in GMail, once I move the cursor outside of the labels area they snap back in to place as if they hadn't been horizontally scrolled.

I don't experience this on my Windows partition on the same laptop, though, which leads me to think it's either something odd about the linux version of Chrome or something odd about my particular machine.

I'm not really sure what information is relevant. I'm using I3 as my WM. I checked to see if this happens in fullscreen mode for i3 (grasping at straws), and it does.

Last edited by dgalt (2017-09-23 17:16:54)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,017

Re: Odd Horizontal Scrolling Issue in Chrome / Chromium

Wild guess: overlay scrollbars?

Edit: this doesn't work as url, but enter it into the location bar: chrome://flags/#overlay-scrollbars

Last edited by seth (2017-09-24 07:48:44)

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Chazza

Wiki Maintainer

Registered: 2013-06-02

Posts: 506

Re: Odd Horizontal Scrolling Issue in Chrome / Chromium

If you're using libinput for the touchpad as I'm assuming you probably are, have you tried disabling horizontal scrolling? The quickest way to do this is with xinput.

You need to run xinput (without arguments) to get the device id for your input device. Then run 'xinput list-props <device-id>'. One of the listed props should be called "Horizontal Scrolling" and it should have a property id. Once you have that, you can run 'xinput set-prop <device-id> <prop-id> 0'.

You can make this permanent with a config file in '/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d' - see the Libinput article for details.

It's more of a workaround than a solution I guess as you shouldn't be having horizontal scrolling at all in things like the gmail labels as you say. But it should avoid the unwanted behaviour.

Last edited by Chazza (2017-09-24 14:17:34)

dgalt

Member

Registered: 2015-04-22

Posts: 52

Re: Odd Horizontal Scrolling Issue in Chrome / Chromium

Wild guess: overlay scrollbars?

Edit: this doesn't work as url, but enter it into the location bar: chrome://flags/#overlay-scrollbars

Tried disabling it, no difference.

I have also tried disabling smooth scrolling, but again no effect.

If you're using libinput for the touchpad as I'm assuming you probably are, have you tried disabling horizontal scrolling? The quickest way to do this is with xinput.
You need to run xinput (without arguments) to get the device id for your input device. Then run 'xinput list-props <device-id>'. One of the listed props should be called "Horizontal Scrolling" and it should have a property id. Once you have that, you can run 'xinput set-prop <device-id> <prop-id> 0'.
You can make this permanent with a config file in '/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d' - see the Libinput article for details.
It's more of a workaround than a solution I guess as you shouldn't be having horizontal scrolling at all in things like the gmail labels as you say. But it should avoid the unwanted behaviour.

Right, I had thought about doing this. As you said, though, that would mean no horizontal scrolling in other places where I do need it, which wouldn't be ideal either.