Mouse highlighter sometimes leaves lasting impression of primary button click

[sven-braem]

Microsoft PowerToys version

0.86.0

Installation method

PowerToys auto-update

Running as admin

No

Area(s) with issue?

Mouse Utilities

Steps to reproduce

I have configured the mouse highlighter to show the highlighter for the primary button (and secondary and always highlight). Radius is set to 40px, fade delay 250ms, fade duration 500ms.

Sometimes the highlight for the primary button stays on screen forever instead of fading away (as shown in the screenshot). The highlight stays on the spot while I can move the mouse to other areas and generate other primary button impressions that do fade away. Unfortunately I'm not able to reproduce as it only happens from time to time. I think it may have to do with the screen going blank after a time out and when waking up the screen with the click of the mouse. I generally don't see this happening when I'm actively working on the screen. I have a dual monitor setup. I didn't pay attention to it yet but it may be only happening on my secondary monitor so a disabled screen and waking it up by generating a click on the second monitor.

I'm able to clear the fixated highlight impression by turning off the highlight feature. Turning it back on, everything is normal again.

✔️ Expected Behavior

There should never be a fixated primary button highlight impression that stays on the screen

❌ Actual Behavior

Once it appears, the fixated primary button highlight impression stays on the screen until the feature is turned off.

Other Software

No response

[similar-issues-ai]

We've found some similar issues:

• Persistent Mouse highlighter  #33335 , similarity score: 87%
• Mouse Highlighter multiple colored circular areas not disappearing #35292 , similarity score: 87%
• Mouse Highlighter leaving primary button circles behind #29444 , similarity score: 87%
• Mouse highlighter intermittently forgets to hide a mouse click highlight #35571 , similarity score: 86%
• Mouse highlighter problem #14712 , similarity score: 85%
• Mouse highlighter ghosting #21099 , similarity score: 84%
• Mouse Highlighter - Ghost Click #29684 , similarity score: 83%
• Mouse Highlighter 'ghost' highlight #16068 , similarity score: 83%

If any of the above are duplicates, please consider closing this issue out and adding additional context in the original issue.

Note: You can give me feedback by 👍 or 👎 this comment.

[sven-braem]

It may be a duplicate but I did not see my description, of how to replicate it, in the other bug reports so I think it is worthwhile to keep it open.

[sg-ll]

I've encountered this myself and if I had to guess, it's probably due to custom event handling (in an offending application) cancelling a bubble up event handler stack type thing, which prevents a hook event that handles triggering the fade out of the current active indicator highlight. Toggling Mouse Highlighter off and on again thankfully clears the "ghost" highlights (in my experience).

Maybe there could be a sanity check though, like an interval (maybe after 10 seconds) that checks if the mouse button is still actually in a pressed state (not sure if Windows makes that kind of event data available though).