Why has my Ctrl+Shift+U key for Unicode input stopped working?

Question

When I press Ctrl+Shift+u and type numbers, nothing happens. Holding down Control or Shift doesn't help, either.

I've tried running sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration, but that didn't solve the problem.

It seems things have changed since this question was answered. I've tried all these answers in 22.10 Kinetic and none of them work. — Jason, Mar 07 '23 at 22:07

jdthood · Answer 1 · 2015-01-05T12:16:13.647

9

It hasn't stopped working in general, but the way it works may have led you to think that it has stopped working. When one types Ctrl+Shift+u an underscored letter u appears at the insertion point. This may lead a person (e.g., myself, at first) to think that he has entered an underscored letter u, whereas in fact the underscored letter u indicates the Unicode-entry mode has been activated. If one subsequently keys in a Unicode code point (i.e., the hexadecimal numeral for the character) and hits Enter then the unicode character will appear.

For example, Ctrl+Shift+u 2764Enter inserts a "heavy black heart" Unicode character.

Demonstration: ❤

edited Jan 05 '15 at 12:16

answered Jan 03 '15 at 11:08

jdthood

12,467

6

The underlined U does not appear. – EMBLEM Jan 05 '15 at 05:31
2

It stopped working for me too, must be some issue with GTK – MightyPork May 02 '15 at 17:35
Just tested in gedit in Ubuntu 15.04. Worked fine. – jdthood May 03 '15 at 19:25
1

It doesn't work for me on Ubuntu 14.04. It used to work on earlier versions of Ubuntu. – pts Oct 10 '17 at 21:54
Confirmed for Ubuntu 18.08. --> ❤ – somethis Sep 03 '19 at 09:44
1

By the way, this answer bypasses the question entirely because the OP clearly knows how the ctrl+shift+u is supposed to work. It has stopped working for me since I upgraded to 20. – alife Nov 13 '21 at 14:04

Pablo Bianchi · Answer 2 · 2023-12-26T02:32:35.673

5

The reason why entering Ctrl+Shift+u, Unicode hexadecimal number, Enter or Space stop working in Ubuntu 15.10+ is because input method is by default XIM instead of iBus (which is odd since XIM is obsolete and iBus already implement XIM protocol). By changing this they broke this useful shortcut.

To fix it, go to:

On GNOME Shell (17.10+, check with wmctrl -m):
Settings → Region & Language → Manage Installed Languages → Language tab.

^{On Unity: System Settings... → Language Support.}
Keyboard input method system, change it to iBus.
Reboot (reboot)

Reference

gnome - Understanding & setting up different input methods - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

edited Dec 26 '23 at 02:32

answered Jun 28 '18 at 06:37

Pablo Bianchi

15,657

It hasn't stopped working. Please check the solution from jdthood – somethis Sep 03 '19 at 09:45
@somethis, it has stopped working for many of us. The solution from jdthood isn't a solution: It's the way it was supposed to work, and I believe the OP knew this already with his question (he said "stopped working"). I can't get it to work in comments here, gmail, other edit fields, any editor, basically everywhere it used to work in 18.{mumble}. – alife Nov 13 '21 at 14:12
I switched to XIM as the language input method and rebooted. No change. ctrl+shift+U still does nothing. – Jason Mar 07 '23 at 18:50
@Jason Step 2 says change it to iBus. – Pablo Bianchi Mar 07 '23 at 20:06
I've switched it to iBus but it does nothing. Shift+ctrl+u does nothing. – Jason Apr 01 '23 at 02:20
I had simillar trouble; changing to iBus seemed to do nothing. Then I saw Jason's comment above and rebooted. (Despite Jason's having said that he'd done that ....). Anyhow: (1) changing to iBus, and (2) rebooting worked for me. – Rolf Turner Dec 26 '23 at 00:23

Why has my Ctrl+Shift+U key for Unicode input stopped working?

2 Answers2

Reference

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