Drag to scroll with the mouse — without breaking clicks

Touch users scroll a horizontal list natively, but mouse users need wiring: hold, drag, release. The hard part isn’t moving the row — it’s that a naive implementation turns every released drag into an accidental item click. This example separates the two with a small DragDealer class and three mouse props.
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Grab anywhere on the row and drag. Items are still clickable — a click after a drag is suppressed.

How it works

ScrollMenu exposes curried mouse handlers — onMouseDown, onMouseUp and onMouseMove each receive the API object and return a regular event handler. The DragDealer instance tracks one anchor coordinate: on every move it applies the delta straight to scrollContainer.current.scrollLeft. Native scrolling does the rest — no transforms, no physics, and the scrollbar stays real.

Why clicks keep working

A drag only starts after the pointer moves more than 5px, so a plain click never scrolls. The other direction is the classic bug: item onClick fires after mouseup, so releasing a drag on top of a card would select it. dragStop clears the applying flag immediately but keeps dragging set for one more animation frame — click handlers check it and bail.

Details worth stealing

Full source

Complete and copy-paste ready — this is the exact file behind the live-editable Storybook version.

MouseDrag.source.tsx
import 'react-horizontal-scrolling-menu/dist/styles.css';

import styled from '@emotion/styled';
import React from 'react';
import {
  type publicApiType,
  ScrollMenu,
  VisibilityContext,
} from 'react-horizontal-scrolling-menu';

export function MouseDrag() {
  const [items] = React.useState(() => getItems());
  const [selected, setSelected] = React.useState<string[]>([]);

  // NOTE: for drag by mouse
  const dragState = React.useRef(new DragDealer());

  const handleDrag =
    ({ scrollContainer }: publicApiType) =>
    (ev: React.MouseEvent) =>
      dragState.current.dragMove(ev, (posDiff) => {
        if (scrollContainer.current) {
          scrollContainer.current.scrollLeft += posDiff;
        }
      });
  const onMouseDown = React.useCallback(
    () => dragState.current.dragStart,
    [dragState],
  );
  const onMouseUp = React.useCallback(
    () => dragState.current.dragStop,
    [dragState],
  );

  const isItemSelected = (id: string): boolean =>
    !!selected.find((el) => el === id);

  const handleItemClick = (itemId: string) => {
    if (dragState.current.dragging) {
      return false;
    }
    const itemSelected = isItemSelected(itemId);

    setSelected((currentSelected: string[]) =>
      itemSelected
        ? currentSelected.filter((el) => el !== itemId)
        : currentSelected.concat(itemId),
    );
  };

  return (
    <NoScrollbar onMouseLeave={() => dragState.current.dragStop()}>
      <ScrollMenu
        LeftArrow={LeftArrow}
        RightArrow={RightArrow}
        onMouseDown={onMouseDown}
        onMouseUp={onMouseUp}
        onMouseMove={handleDrag}
        onWheel={onWheel}
      >
        {items.map(({ id }) => (
          <Card
            title={id}
            itemId={id} // NOTE: itemId is required for track items
            key={id}
            onClick={() => handleItemClick(id)}
            selected={isItemSelected(id)}
          />
        ))}
      </ScrollMenu>
    </NoScrollbar>
  );
}
export default MouseDrag;

class DragDealer {
  clicked: boolean;
  dragging: boolean;
  position: number;

  constructor() {
    this.clicked = false;
    this.dragging = false;
    this.position = 0;
  }

  public dragStart = (ev: React.MouseEvent) => {
    this.position = ev.clientX;
    this.clicked = true;
  };

  public dragStop = () => {
    window.requestAnimationFrame(() => {
      this.dragging = false;
      this.clicked = false;
    });
  };

  public dragMove = (ev: React.MouseEvent, cb: (posDiff: number) => void) => {
    const newDiff = this.position - ev.clientX;

    const movedEnough = Math.abs(newDiff) > 5;

    if (this.clicked && movedEnough) {
      this.dragging = true;
    }

    if (this.dragging && movedEnough) {
      this.position = ev.clientX;
      cb(newDiff);
    }
  };
}

const NoScrollbar = styled('div')({
  '& .react-horizontal-scrolling-menu--scroll-container::-webkit-scrollbar': {
    display: 'none',
  },
  '& .react-horizontal-scrolling-menu--scroll-container': {
    scrollbarWidth: 'none',
    '-ms-overflow-style': 'none',
  },
});

function LeftArrow() {
  const visibility = React.useContext<publicApiType>(VisibilityContext);

  const disabled = visibility.useLeftArrowVisible();

  return (
    <Arrow
      disabled={disabled}
      onClick={() => visibility.scrollPrev()}
      testId="left-arrow"
    >
      Left
    </Arrow>
  );
}

function RightArrow() {
  const visibility = React.useContext<publicApiType>(VisibilityContext);

  const disabled = visibility.useRightArrowVisible();

  return (
    <Arrow
      disabled={disabled}
      onClick={() => visibility.scrollNext()}
      testId="right-arrow"
    >
      Right
    </Arrow>
  );
}

function Arrow({
  children,
  disabled,
  onClick,
  className,
  testId,
}: {
  children: React.ReactNode;
  disabled: boolean;
  onClick: VoidFunction;
  className?: string;
  testId: string;
}) {
  return (
    <ArrowButton
      disabled={disabled}
      onClick={onClick}
      className={'arrow' + `-${className}`}
      data-testid={testId}
    >
      {children}
    </ArrowButton>
  );
}
const ArrowButton = styled('button')((props) => ({
  cursor: 'pointer',
  display: 'flex',
  flexDirection: 'column',
  justifyContent: 'center',
  marginBottom: '2px',
  opacity: props.disabled ? '0' : '1',
  userSelect: 'none',
  borderRadius: '6px',
  borderWidth: '1px',
}));

function Card({
  onClick,
  selected,
  title,
  itemId,
}: {
  onClick: (context: publicApiType) => void;
  selected: boolean;
  title: string;
  itemId: string;
}) {
  const visibility = React.useContext<publicApiType>(VisibilityContext);
  const isVisible = visibility.useIsVisible(itemId, true);

  return (
    <CardBody
      data-cy={itemId}
      onClick={() => onClick(visibility)}
      onKeyDown={(ev: React.KeyboardEvent) => {
        ev.code === 'Enter' && onClick(visibility);
      }}
      data-testid="card"
      role="button"
      tabIndex={0}
      className="card"
      visible={isVisible}
      selected={selected}
    >
      <div className="header">
        <div>{title}</div>
        <div className="visible">visible: {JSON.stringify(isVisible)}</div>
        <div className="selected">selected: {JSON.stringify(!!selected)}</div>
      </div>
      <div className="background" />
    </CardBody>
  );
}
const CardBody = styled('div')<{ selected?: boolean; visible?: boolean }>(
  (props) => ({
    border: '1px solid',
    display: 'inline-block',
    margin: '0 10px',
    width: '160px',
    userSelect: 'none',
    borderRadius: '8px',
    overflow: 'hidden',

    '& .header': {
      backgroundColor: 'white',
    },

    '& .visible': {
      backgroundColor: props.visible ? 'transparent' : 'gray',
    },

    '& .background': {
      backgroundColor: props.selected ? 'green' : 'bisque',
      height: '200px',
    },
  }),
);

const getId = (index: number) => `${'test'}${index}`;

const getItems = () =>
  Array(10)
    .fill(0)
    .map((_, ind) => ({ id: getId(ind) }));

function onWheel(apiObj: publicApiType, ev: React.WheelEvent): void {
  // NOTE: no good standart way to distinguish touchpad scrolling gestures
  // but can assume that gesture will affect X axis, mouse scroll only Y axis
  // of if deltaY too small probably is it touchpad
  const isThouchpad = Math.abs(ev.deltaX) !== 0 || Math.abs(ev.deltaY) < 15;

  if (isThouchpad) {
    ev.stopPropagation();
    return;
  }

  if (ev.deltaY < 0) {
    apiObj.scrollNext();
  } else {
    apiObj.scrollPrev();
  }
}

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