We show a rigidity theorem for the Seiberg–Witten invariants mod 2 for families of spin 4-manifolds. A mechanism of this rigidity theorem also gives a family version of 10/8-type inequality. As an application, we prove the existence of non-smoothable topological families of 4-manifolds whose fiber, base space, and total space are smoothable as manifolds. These non-smoothable topological families provide new examples of $4$-manifolds $M$ for which the inclusion maps $\operatorname {Diff}(M) \hookrightarrow \operatorname {Homeo}(M)$ are not weak homotopy equivalences. We shall also give a new series of non-smoothable topological actions on some spin $4$-manifolds.

In this paper we primarily consider two natural subgroups of the autohomeomorphism group of the real line $\mathbb{R}$, endowed with the compact-open topology. First, we prove that the subgroup of homeomorphisms that map the set of rational numbers $\mathbb{Q}$ onto itself is homeomorphic to the infinite power of $\mathbb{Q}$ with the product topology. Secondly, the group consisting of homeomorphisms that map the pseudoboundary onto itself is shown to be homeomorphic to the hyperspace of nonempty compact subsets of $\mathbb{Q}$ with the Vietoris topology. We obtain similar results for the Cantor set but we also prove that these results do not extend to ${{\mathbb{R}}^{n}}$ for $n\ge 2$, by linking the groups in question with Erdős space.