You right-click in PlotJuggler and the menu you expect does not appear — or appears somewhere unexpected, or not at all. This symptom appeared in this site’s own search data (users searching variants of “right click doesn’t work”), so this guide exists — but it is written honestly, as a checklist rather than a bug diagnosis: there is no single documented “right-click bug” in PlotJuggler that explains most cases, and inventing one would not help you. What does exist is a short list of checkable causes — which UI surface you clicked, whether the window truly had focus, what your window manager or remote-desktop layer did with the click, and whether your version carries a known right-click interaction issue. Work through them in order. All guides are indexed on the Troubleshooting hub.
Check 1 — Are you right-clicking the surface that has a menu?
Context menus in PlotJuggler belong to specific surfaces — a plot, a curve, a series in the list — and right-clicking empty chrome, a toolbar or a panel border legitimately produces nothing, or the desktop’s own behaviour. Before concluding anything is broken, right-click directly on a plotted curve and directly on a series name, and compare. Two workflow facts belong here: the long-standing way to build an XY plot is a right-button drag pairing two series (press, drag, release — not a click), so a “menu” that appears when you meant to start an XY drag may be the gesture being read as a click; and the current tracker carries a directly related report — “Can’t create XY plots from streaming topics: right-click ‘Force topic streaming’ menu blocks the XY right-drag” (issue #1428, open) — in which a streaming-topic context menu interferes with exactly that right-drag workflow. If your case involves streaming topics and XY plots, that report is your reference point, and using a loaded file’s series instead of a streaming topic is a practical sidestep while it stands.
Check 2 — Focus and window-manager behaviour
- Give the window focus first. Left-click once inside the PlotJuggler window, then right-click. On some desktops the first click of any kind is consumed to raise and focus the window — the click worked, it just went to the window manager instead of the application.
- Check for desktop-level interception. Tiling window managers, global gesture tools, and “right-click on title bar” system menus can claim right-clicks before applications see them. The control test is another Qt application on the same desktop: if right-click menus misbehave there too, you have a desktop configuration question, not a PlotJuggler question.
- High-DPI oddities are a documented class. The tracker has fielded menu-rendering complaints under high-DPI conditions (menus overlapping and rendering unnaturally, issue #468). If menus appear but in the wrong place or half off-screen, note your display scaling before assuming the click failed — the menu may have opened where you were not looking.
Check 3 — Remote desktop, VMs and screen sharing
If you use PlotJuggler over a remote desktop, a VM console or a screen share, right-click is one of the first gestures those layers remap, delay or swallow — some send it only on release, some translate it into a long-press, some reserve it for the host. The honest test costs two minutes: sit at the machine (or a direct local session) and repeat the same right-click on the same plot. If it works locally, PlotJuggler was never the problem, and the fix — if any is needed — lives in your remote tool’s mouse settings. This is also why reports of this symptom rarely reproduce for other users: the variable is the layer between the mouse and the application, which only you can see.
Check 4 — Your version, and the update path
Right-click behaviour is also version-sensitive in practice — issue #1428 above is an open report against PlotJuggler 4.0.0 itself, describing a right-click menu that fires on mouse press on Linux and blocks a drag. That supports one practical conclusion: if you are on an old build, updating is a real diagnostic step. Current releases are PlotJuggler 4.0.0 and PlotJuggler 3.17.2, both on the Download page, with install routes in the Install hub. Update, then repeat the exact clicks that failed — same plot, same series. If the behaviour changes, stay on the current version; if it does not, you have at least removed version drift from the list, which is what a checklist is for.
Workarounds while you diagnose
- Do the task another way once. Most menu actions in a plotting tool have a second path — a toolbar control, a different panel, or rebuilding the view. Getting your analysis done today matters more than winning the argument with the context menu.
- Use left-drag workflows where they exist. Time plots are built with left-button drags from the series list; only the XY pairing specifically uses the right-button drag. The XY plot tutorial and drag-and-drop guide cover both gestures.
- Record the specifics if you report it. Version, operating system, local or remote, which surface you clicked, and whether other applications behave the same way. A report with those five facts is actionable; “right click doesn’t work” alone — as the search phrase shows — is where everyone starts, not where a fix starts.
If the menu works but the action behind it fails, your symptom has changed categories — return to the Troubleshooting hub and follow the guide for the new symptom.
Related guides on this hub: if the gesture that fails is a drag rather than a click, see large-file performance checks for recordings that make every interaction feel heavy, and AppImage won’t open if you are running the AppImage in a session where other input behaviour is also unusual.