Can't drag and drop items now

Help and Support
1

HI everybody
For some reason now in Zorin 15.2 I can no longer drag and drop items. I have done a search and tried doing things like enabling/disabling ‘new views’ under ‘experimental’ with no luck.

For some reason this was working, but overnight it decided not to. Anybody able to give me some tips about how to fix this? I use it quite a bit so this is a bit annoying.

Thank you for any help here.

2

Hello @theredpoppet

There are several layers to a drag-and-drop functionality in a Linux-based OS like Zorin, which is based on Ubuntu. To help you address the issue, let’s try to dissect it methodically.

  1. Graphical Environment: Zorin uses the GNOME desktop environment. Occasionally, after system updates or tweaks, GNOME might face minor hiccups. As a first step, try restarting the GNOME Shell by pressing Alt + F2, type r, then press Enter. This should refresh the desktop environment.

  2. File Manager: Zorin uses Nautilus (Files) as its default file manager. Check if there is an update or a bug fix available. Open the terminal and use the following commands:

    sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

  3. User Settings: Sometimes, user-specific configuration files can get corrupted or conflict with other settings. To check if the problem is related to user-specific settings:

    a. Create a new user account on your Zorin system.

    b. Log in to the new account and check if the drag-and-drop functionality works there.

    c. If it does, the issue lies within the configurations/settings of the original user. You can then decide to migrate to the new user or dive deeper to fix the specific configuration in the original account.

  4. Extensions: GNOME Shell extensions might conflict with one another or with the system. If you’ve installed any extensions recently, try disabling them one by one to see if any of them is the culprit.

  5. Mouse/Touchpad Drivers: It might also be a hardware or driver issue. To ensure your input devices are functioning properly:

    a. Check if dragging and dropping works in other applications or environments.

    b. Test another mouse to rule out a hardware malfunction.

  6. Logs and Diagnostics: Check system logs for any errors related to GNOME, Nautilus, or any other relevant component. Use the following command:

    journalctl -xe | grep -i error

  7. Rollback: If the issue started after a particular update, and none of the above solutions work, consider rolling back to a previous system state using Timeshift (if you had set it up) or reinstalling the particular packages you suspect to be at fault.

Lastly, if you’ve tried all these steps and still face the issue, consider reaching out to the Zorin OS community forums or Ubuntu forums for more specialized help. Sometimes, issues like this can be due to very specific hardware-software interactions, and someone with a similar configuration might have encountered and resolved the same issue.

I hope this helps! Let us know how you progress.