@donq Yep, that was it! The problem was caused by an extension: Text to Speech (TTS) by mornicolhkher. I uninstalled it and everything is back to normal. Thanks, @donq and everyone else who replied, for your help!

@burnout426 Yes, I did, and also, when uninstalling, I was directed to a survey where I logged the bug for the developer's eyes only.

@burnout426 Thanks for doing the test on your computer and replying. Sounds like this may be issue specific to my Opera installation. I am at a loss, though, as to what may be causing it. My Opera version is the same as yours now (76.0.4017.123), and the problem is still there.

One interesting detail is that I can select and drag static text on any internal Opera settings page, such as, for instance, the About page, but not on regular websites.

Any suggestions for what I can do to further diagnose or resolve this issue?

Oh well, since I've tried everything I could think of to fix this issue, to no avail, and got no suggestions from this forum, either, I finally had no choice but to abandon Opera with a heavy heart and return to Chrome. Too bad, I liked Opera, but I just can't live with crashes every two hours.

Update: Looking at the opera://crashes page, I have noticed that the crashes are not entirely random, as they tend to (but do not always) occur in exactly two-hour intervals. It looks like the culprit is some sort of a periodic request that sometimes results in a crash. One suspect is the Google News page (https://news.google.com), as it is always sitting there in an open tab whenever the browser is up. In any case, I have also had the Google News page sitting open in Chrome, and there were no crashes, so this is specifically an Opera issue.

Here is the recent crash history:

Crash from Saturday, August 13, 2022 at 4:39:20 AM
Status: Uploaded
Uploaded Crash Report ID: Discarded=1
Upload Time: Saturday, August 13, 2022 at 4:39:25 AM
Local Crash Context: da438090-fc7f-4da5-8457-8570ba8cf6a0

Crash from Saturday, August 13, 2022 at 2:39:16 AM
Status: Uploaded
Uploaded Crash Report ID: Discarded=1
Upload Time: Saturday, August 13, 2022 at 2:39:21 AM
Local Crash Context: 8c9b4b0a-db58-4459-80b1-f0922e182fe0

Crash from Saturday, August 13, 2022 at 12:39:15 AM
Status: Uploaded
Uploaded Crash Report ID: Discarded=1
Upload Time: Saturday, August 13, 2022 at 12:39:21 AM
Local Crash Context: e694bd9b-955e-4bb9-9c33-c5169efbb378

Crash from Friday, August 12, 2022 at 3:13:06 AM
Status: Uploaded
Uploaded Crash Report ID: Discarded=1
Upload Time: Friday, August 12, 2022 at 3:13:11 AM
Local Crash Context: 761773ca-7a8a-4108-b263-db9d63a3c404

Crash from Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:10:28 PM
Status: Uploaded
Uploaded Crash Report ID: Discarded=1
Upload Time: Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:10:33 PM
Local Crash Context: fc03da11-e40f-4594-a20e-5553907b06ad

Crash from Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 8:10:22 PM
Status: Uploaded
Uploaded Crash Report ID: Discarded=1
Upload Time: Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 8:10:27 PM
Local Crash Context: c3109a4a-bcf0-49da-b1df-5992fc704524

Crash from Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 6:10:17 PM
Status: Uploaded
Uploaded Crash Report ID: Discarded=1
Upload Time: Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 6:10:22 PM
Local Crash Context: 44313893-5e73-4481-8123-013dc00a7a06

Crash from Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 4:10:15 PM
Status: Uploaded
Uploaded Crash Report ID: Discarded=1
Upload Time: Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 4:10:21 PM
Local Crash Context: d3e15031-7e3c-4ce2-9020-bc3ca2632072

Crash from Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 12:41:39 AM
Status: Uploaded
Uploaded Crash Report ID: Discarded=1
Upload Time: Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 12:41:44 AM
Local Crash Context: 96313f56-a415-4d5d-92cd-989f48d29e24

Crash from Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 10:41:35 PM
Status: Uploaded
Uploaded Crash Report ID: Discarded=1
Upload Time: Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 10:41:41 PM
Local Crash Context: 1c42ee28-7a2a-49e3-a0f6-da3082416dea

Crash from Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 4:57:08 PM
Status: Uploaded
Uploaded Crash Report ID: Discarded=1
Upload Time: Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 4:57:13 PM
Local Crash Context: ce730814-f426-4798-9297-ed331a2bef30

Crash from Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 1:42:38 AM
Status: Uploaded
Uploaded Crash Report ID: Discarded=1
Upload Time: Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 1:42:43 AM
Local Crash Context: 8368ea7a-4ce9-46df-b4ec-3f9b7a73db0b

Starting a few days ago, I've been experiencing a very annoying problem: every once in a while, Opera closes and restarts all by itself. I haven't noticed that these restarts are tied to anything I am doing (they happen whether or not I am doing anything in the browser window) or any other factor or condition on the computer. They just seem to occur randomly. Also, after some (but not all) restarts, I find myself signed out of the Opera sync account and have to log back in. I have tried reinstalling Opera, but still no joy. I have checked to make sure no new extensions appear in the list, so I don't see how those could be causing the problem. I am at my wit's end now and getting close to dumping Opera and going back to Chrome (yuck!). Any ideas on how to solve this issue?

@nunya Thanks for your reply! Following your suggestion, I've checked what happens in the "preferences" file and found that the horizontal "window_placement" parameter is 0 when the window is positioned at about 20 pixels or so to the right of the left edge of the screen. If I leave it any closer to the edge, the value becomes negative, and when Opera is restarted, the window is repositioned at that minimum distance (curiously, the value in the preferences file remains negative). If I indent the window by more than 20 pixels, the value in preferences reflects the correct position and the placement is kept between restarts. I have also noticed that the placement values seem to be expressed in 1080p-sized pixels, even though I have a 4K screen, but that, I think, is still a common practice in software design. What I don't understand is why Opera would regard window positions that are too close to the left edge as negative...

Starting about a week ago, Opera has been having trouble keeping its window position from one session to the next. Before that, it always opened in the same place where I always keep it--flush with the left and top edges of the screen. Now, it opens shifted about 20 pixels or so to the right from the left edge (and still flush with the top edge, no problem there). Adjusting the window, closing and then reopening it produces the same error in horizontal positioning every time. This only happens when I place the window within 20 pixels of the left edge. If placed anywhere else, the position is remembered correctly. It looks as if some setting is not allowing the window to remain too close to the left edge of the screen. This is only happening with Opera. Other browsers (Google, Edge, Firefox) have no trouble keeping their position. Any idea what's going on with this?

@burnout426 Yes, I did, and also, when uninstalling, I was directed to a survey where I logged the bug for the developer's eyes only.

This extension screws up the drag-and-drop functionality for static text on webpages. Any attempt to drag selected text results in reselection of the text, instead of dragging. I tried it with and without the highlighting option -- that makes no difference. Had to uninstall...

@donq Yep, that was it! The problem was caused by an extension: Text to Speech (TTS) by mornicolhkher. I uninstalled it and everything is back to normal. Thanks, @donq and everyone else who replied, for your help!

@burnout426 Thanks for doing the test on your computer and replying. Sounds like this may be issue specific to my Opera installation. I am at a loss, though, as to what may be causing it. My Opera version is the same as yours now (76.0.4017.123), and the problem is still there.

One interesting detail is that I can select and drag static text on any internal Opera settings page, such as, for instance, the About page, but not on regular websites.

Any suggestions for what I can do to further diagnose or resolve this issue?

@leocg @sgunhouse Actually, the popup menu in itself doesn't seem to be the issue. I've played with this some more and discovered some really weird and wrong behavior in Opera around selecting and dragging text in general. You can see it here in a screen recording I've made:

Opera behavior: https://youtu.be/MX3ciUA8z64

By contrast, Chrome has no such issues at all:

Chrome behavior: https://youtu.be/743AzFa38w0

Is this only happening on my Opera installation? If so, what could be causing it? (I am currently on version 76.0.4017.107.)

Thanks!