When selecting using the marquee tool, PS becomes unresponsive or "stuck" making a selection

Report · Oct 19, 2025

Issue: When selecting an area using the marquee tool, Photoshop ignores most types of user input and various deselect and tool switch attempts becoming stuck in "select" state.

Photoshop Version: Beta 27.0
OS Version: Windows 11 26100.6584 (24H2)

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open any document in PS (suddenly started having the problem in stable release initially, but noticed it persisted into beta versions as well)
2. Select the marquee tool using keybind or menu
3. Make a selection of any size
4. Attempt to stop making a selection

Expected result: Using the marquee tool, I expect to be able to left-click and hold (using a mouse) to then drag the cursor across my document to select a desired area, and to release the left-click hold to finalize the selection area without issue.

Actual result: When making a selection using the marquee tool by left-clicking and holding it while dragging the cursor across an area, the program becomes nearly unresponsive and ignores the user's release from holding the left mouse button as well as various other ways to deselect an area and ways to swap to a new tool, with the only way to fix the unresponsiveness being to press the "Windows" key until the program detects the user is no longer making a selection (switching to another program does not give the same result). This method doesn't always do anything though.

I've tried using a fresh install of the program as well as the default preference settings.

Report · Oct 20, 2025

@Antibang you'd be better off reporting the issue on the Photoshop Beta forum

Report · Nov 06, 2025

Something that has started happening in the last couple updates is the inability to release marquee selections. This affects both rectangular and circular marquees when I left-click and begin dragging them out to the desired shape, the marquee 'sticks' and my mouse won't let go. Sometimes they will release when the cursor is dragged over a palette, but other times it requires leaving Photoshop and then coming back. Of course, how it releases doesn't really matter, as the marquee isn't anywhere near the desired size/shape that I wanted. The lasso tool works just fine and is as precise as one would expect.

This only occurs after some time and is not immediate when launching Photoshop, and restarting fixes the problem until it rears it's head again. I'm not having the issue in any other application, Adobe or otherwise, and the behavior continues even after switching to another mouse. Am I the only one having this issue? Anyone else experienced it, and if so, have a suggested fix?

A screen video showing the issue:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/g8vn4wm35a1qcfh8lhmzi/bandicam-2025-11-06-01-10-33-077.mp4?rlkey=oag5...

Report · Nov 06, 2025

@jdietz72 when I work in Photoshop, I either use keyboard shortcuts. to release or deselect a Marquee selction, Control D

Or better yet, you can often just click once anywhere outside of the selection on your canvas to deselect it

Report · Nov 06, 2025

There was a similar thread two weeks ago. We can try a few things, but it sounds broken to me.

Select either marquee tool and reset it.

Reset Preferences, and best to do it manually as per this link.

https://helpx.adobe.com/ie/photoshop/using/preferences.html#Manually

Try the Beta version

Reinstall.

If none of that helps, then reinstall a previous version — you don't need to uninstall the current version — and we'll tag one of the Adobe employees.

Good luck.