Just to tidy this up...
There are bad things said about Altium but on the plus side they don't cut you off the moment your support subscription expires. I have seriously expensive software which won't reinstall without a support subscription, for instance. I found that despite being off the books for some time I could still download the full offline 22.2.1 (just prior to the bug insertion), install and activate it and then update all the extensions, etc. So full marks there.
Anyway, I installed the prior version and then found that the reason it took me 2 years to notice this issue is because I don't use it! (Not sure why the HUD is displayed, but perhaps that's what my messing about enabled.) Instead, for footprint creation at least, I tend to use temporary grids and/or guidelines to accurately place pads and stuff.