My trusty old Chromebook, which a reader got for me almost exactly six years ago, has been showing its age for a while now. The letters had worn off the keys so badly I kept making typos (because I’m a one-finger typist), the processor apparently couldn’t keep up with some websites, and since Google stopped updating it a couple of years ago, some snobby websites refused to let me in (meaning I needed to access them with my phone, which I really hate). Then about two weeks ago, the “1” key stopped registering, making it very difficult to type either the numeral or the exclamation point; the next day the “Q” went, so I saw the writing on the wall and used an Amazon gift card given me by a generous gentleman to buy a new one. I like Chromebooks for several reasons: they’re small; they do everything I need them to do for a pretty low price (this one cost me less than $130), without my having to pay for a lot of bells & whistles I don’t need; they arrive free of bloatware; and all I need to do is sign in and all my bookmarks pop right up (I keep all of my data on a thumb drive, easily switched from old computer to new). Of course, all new computers have a frustration factor because computer companies are run by sadists, but with Chromebooks it’s usually over in a few hours (as opposed to days or weeks on the Windows machines I used to use). Alas, this one has been annoying me for a week now with two specific issues: the more aggravating one is that when I right-click with the mouse (the same one I was using without issues before), sometimes the menu comes up normally and I can do what I like. But at other times, it seems to want to “guess” what I want from that menu and implement it automatically, seemingly at random; it may suddenly delete whatever I highlighted, open up an emoji menu, or search the highlighted text on Google (the latter two being functions I have never and would never attempt to access via right-click). I have no idea what this is about, but as this is a ’24 model I’m guessing it’s some artificial stupidity feature, but I have no idea how to turn it off so I need to use the keyboard for copy-paste or cut-paste, which slows me down. The other problem is apparently Google-wide, judging by what I found online: there appears to be no way to turn off the auto”correct” function, resulting in the computer frequently replacing words I want with words I don’t want (I like it to call attention to typos or misspellings, but I don’t want it getting notions that it should “correct” me without permission). So if anyone knows how to fix either of these problems; please let me know in the comments. 
Diary #731
July 2, 2024 by Maggie McNeill
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Could it be an overly sensitive trackpad? Are you right clicking or two finger tapping (I think two finger tapping is built in, I’m pretty sure I use it on my chromebook).
I only use the pad when I can’t use the mouse for some reason. This is the same actual mouse I was using with my old Chromebook with no such issue. I slowed down the click-speed and it stopped flashing past the menu, but it still refuses to display the menu at all about a third of the time. It happened while I was on Twitter this morning: for three uses of right-click in a row it gave me the menu for copy-paste as it should, then it suddenly decided that right-click meant “delete the sentence I just typed”. So I retyped, used control-C instead, then when I went to right-click again for paste it kept bringing up the stupid emoji menu instead of the copy-paste menu.
There are two places to change settings, the Chrome browser and the overall system.
Open Chrome. Languages. Under Spell check, turn on or off Check for spelling errors when you type text on web pages.
Next, at the bottom right, select the time.
Select Settings .
Under “Device,” select Keyboard and then Input settings.
Select Input method.
Next to your enabled keyboard, select Right Arrow .
To turn off Auto-correction:
For Physical keyboard: Under “Physical keyboard,” turn off Auto-correction.
For On-screen keyboard: Under “On-screen keyboard,” turn off Auto-correction.
Nah, I’m afraid not; I tried all that (as suggested by both Grace and people online) and it only gives me two choices: no checking AT ALL or asinine “correction” of non-errors. There is no choice for “mark things you perceive as errors but let me decide what to do with marked text”. I saw lots of other people complaining about this exact thing online; apparently it’s a fairly new Google issue, past year or so.