Menus instead of action?

I'm using various mice, the Apple "Magic Mouse", & two or three non-Apple ones, and it seems to happen with all of them, but only when I use Safari, or other Apple apps, other browsers work as they should.

It also is wack, that you can't just put in a search word or terms and hit the return key, to do a search, as Safari will act as if everything is a url, even though no other browser has that issue. It's quite a pain to want to look up something quickly, and I can't just put in the keywords and go! I either have to wait a few seconds for it to offer a google search option, or hope that the dropdown or right-click menu to paste in my search terms offers me the option to just paste, and not only "paste & search" which automatically treats it as a url. And lots of the time, it will only show "paste & search", with no option to just paste, .... I mean, huh?

I understand what may look like a url & what doesn't, as I've been using browsers for a good 30 yrs, including Safari, and it's never done this until this last year or so. If it's guessing, it's guessing wrong far too much of the time. ;-)

The fact that this also is happening with apps in the Dock, as well, where instead of opening when I click on them, a dropdown menu pops out, likely indicates an Apple issue beyond just Safari. However, it's odd that none of this happens when I use any other browser, only with Safari. I also seem to have far more issues with slowness (like now, typing requires me to type, then wait & wait for the letters to finally appear, before I can continue), buffering videos (despite a very fast WiFi connection), & very high memory & CPU usage, especially by WindowServer (usually at 6GB & 50-100%+ CPU), and other Apple System processes, whenever I use Safari, which of all the browsers, should be the one that runs the smoothest.

I'm going to try starting in Safe Mode, and see if these issues still appear. If I have no choice, I'll back up everything, then do a clean install or re-install... Maybe there's just some old stuff lying around that are the cause. I would think there might be some way that a new OS could handle cleaning out any old System &/or third party apps that are either obsolete or just in the way. Especially since all the "experts" on here constantly tell us we must not use any third party memory or process management apps, because "Apple's OS handles all that on its own"! Well, I think situations like mine belie that statement.

I tried that, & got freaked out, as it opened up as if I were just setting up my computer, asking all kinds of questions & settings, and so I booted back to where I was pretty quick. That's not what's supposed to happen, is it?

It's odd that you say that, since I find the menus are less likely to open if I press harder on the mouse!

As for the search words in the window being seen as a url, ****, sometimes when I go to paste in it, I'll only see "Paste & Search", Cut & Copy, and Paste alone isn't even an option, which is even more frustrating! I have to click the window again, then try right clicking again, until I see the Paste option. But most of the time, I must paste, then pause a couple seconds until it says "Search via Google" in the dropdown.

As for the memory cleaner warning, what exactly does having one do, that's so bad. I find that when my Activity Monitor is showing lots of memory usage, and a lot of cached files (which clicking on the Empty Caches from the Developer menu, will only remove 100mb, of what's often 10-18 GBs of cache), and begins to slow things down, the only thing that speeds everything back up is to use memory clean 3. I then find everything working back to normal.. So how is having or using it, messing things up? No one's actually explained it, beyond demanding it be removed...

I'm pretty sure I did that, and now wonder what else I could've done, in restarting, that would have caused it to begin going through the whole setting up process? I'll try the safe boot again, cause I don't think I saw the words Safe Boot in the top right.

As to BDAqua's comment, I do have two usernames that are close, and I know that's been an issue, causing a lot of confusion with folders & apps, as I couldn't figure out how to consolidate them both into one. One is my first name alone, the other my first and last names, and I don't know how they both became separate user names.

I'd also like to upgrade from Big Sur, and do a clean install. I just have to figure out how to keep all the files & apps I want to keep, while letting everything else (which I'm sure is a couple decades worth of extraneous junk) go.

Is there some procedure or app that can tell what's junk (like pieces of apps not fully deleted, old system files, and any other stuff that only messes up my functionality?