Is X-Mouse Button Control causing scrolling problems in Firefox? Here's how to troubleshoot the issue

Mozilla released Firefox 110 to the stable channel this week. The browser maker has confirmed that the latest version has a bug that affects X-Mouse Button Control.

XMBC, not to be confused with Kodi which was formerly called XBMC, is a useful software for customizing the functionality of the buttons on your mouse. I mostly just use the portable version of the tool with certain games, it's very handy to control the media volume keys with the extra buttons on my Razer Viper Mini, especially when the music or sound effects get really loud during intense and fast-paced combat.

Why does mouse scrolling not work in Firefox 110?

If you have the X-Mouse Button Control software on your PC, you may have noticed that scrolling with the mouse on web pages does not work in Firefox 110, but the keyboard shortcuts work fine. Why is this happening? You may be aware that Mozilla introduced a new security feature called GPU Sandboxing in Firefox. I recommend reading Martin's article to learn more about it. Long story short, Firefox 110 enables the GPU Sandboxing feature, the underlying changes that it introduces breaks the way how the utility handles scrolling, in other words it is not compatible with the stable version of X-Mouse Button Control, which is 2.19.2.

The issue was reported by users at Bugzilla a few months ago, when GPU Sandboxing was being tested in the nightly channel of the browser. The developer of X-Mouse Button Control has credited Mozilla for reaching out to them regarding the issue, and for assisting them with fixing the problem. If you're interested in the technical details, you can read the discussion between the developers here at the program's community forums. The fix for this bug is already available in XMBC 2.20, but that version is currently being tested in beta, although it does seem pretty stable in my experience, YMMV. The problem has been mentioned in the release notes for Firefox 110. Mozilla even has a dedicated support page to highlight the issue, and the workaround for it.

For those of you who wish to stick with the current version of the tool, read the following steps.

How to fix mouse scrolling issue in Firefox 110 and above (with X-Mouse Button Control)

1. Double-click on the X-Mouse Button Control icon in the system tray (or right-click on it, and select Setup)

2. Switch to the Options tab.

3. Click on the checkbox next to the first option in the right pane, it is labeled "Disable Scroll Window Under Cursor".

4. Hit the Apply button to save the change, and then the Close button to exit the window.

That should fix the mouse scrolling in Firefox.  You don't have to restart XMBC or the browser. (h/t: r/firefox).

Now, that's not exactly a proper solution, but it's a decent workaround to get your mouse's scroll function working again. If you don't want to disable the scrolling option, you can install the beta version of X-Mouse Button Control, which as I mentioned earlier contains the proper fix for the bug.  You can download the beta version from this page. The developer has hinted that XMBC 2.20 could be released for all users soon.

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