MacOS Text Box Selection Issue

[BrendanTB5]

Describe the bug
Myself and some of my coworkers have been experiencing an issue with the text box entry methods on MacOS. Text box entry can become stuck to a length of one to a few characters. The length at which the textbox is stuck seems to correlate to the speed at which text is input.
Most of the time the textbox gets stuck at a one character size, with all characters entered afterwards overwriting that character. I have seen this occur on actions both involving selecting and deleting with the mouse, as well as just clicking into a text box to enter text. The deletion can either occur through pressing the delete button on the keyboard, or by entering new text over the selected text.

I have found this issue in most of the text boxes I interact with where information is commonly selected and deleted (symbol tree, search functionality, filter boxes, Jython window, ect.)

I have not had this issue appear on either Windows versions or Linux builds. This has occurred across multiple Ghidra versions including 11.2.1.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Open a program in the Code Browser.
2. In Symbol tree, enter a string into the filter text box.
3. Using a mouse select the text from the back to the front.
4. Using backspace clear the text box, and then type a character on the keyboard soon after.
5. The text might now be stuck at the size of one character.

This occurs to me about 2/3 of the time performing this action, so some repetition may be required.

Expected behavior
The cursor on the textbox visually appears to be stuck before the new typed character. The expected behavior would be that the cursor is now after the newly entered text and can allow for full text entry.dsfg

Screenshots

I know this is not that useful. But as you can see the cursor is before the character. And after overwriting the first character it will return to being before the first character.

Environment (please complete the following information):

• OS: macOS 10.15.3.1
• Java Version: 21.0.3
• Ghidra Version: 11.2.1
• Ghidra Origin: Official Distro

[dragonmacher]

Which theme are you using? Have you tried a different theme?

This seems to be working on MacOS 15.3, Java 21.0.3, in the latest Ghidra.

I noticed that if while selecting the text with the mouse, without letting go of the left mouse button, I press delete and then keep typing, the text box behaves as you mention. But for me, as soon as I let go of the mouse button, it behaves as expected. This leads me to think that maybe your mouse button release event is getting lost, leaving the text field in the state I mentioned.

[ryanmkurtz]

I see this a lot too in the filter boxes on my Mac. I will speak to @dragonmacher about it next week.

[BrendanTB5]

Which theme are you using? Have you tried a different theme?

This seems to be working on MacOS 15.3, Java 21.0.3, in the latest Ghidra.

I noticed that if while selecting the text with the mouse, without letting go of the left mouse button, I press delete and then keep typing, the text box behaves as you mention. But for me, as soon as I let go of the mouse button, it behaves as expected. This leads me to think that maybe your mouse button release event is getting lost, leaving the text field in the state I mentioned.

Tested on both a custom theme, flat dark, mac, metal, and nimbus themes. All show the same behavior.

[ryanmkurtz]

@BrendanTB5 are you using a magic mouse?

[dragonmacher]

After experimentation and discussing this with the team, it seems like the issue is the the magic mouse, or some other apple hardware.

When this happens, clicking in the text field should fix the issue. We speculate that the problem happens when the text field does not detect a mouse released event and gets stuck in selection mode. Clicking again should reset this.

Assuming the diagnosis is correct, there is not much we can do internally to fix the issue.

[BrendanTB5]

The remedy you list is the correct way that I've found to resolve the issue when it occurs.

To answer @ryanmkurtz 's question, I am not using a Magic Mouse. The mouse I am using is just a standard USB mouse.