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A recurring issue (at least for users that utilize more than one keyboard layout or input source?!), is that Alt+Shift is a sticky setting for changing input source. That means, even if you change Gnome's keyboard settings to something else, like <Super><Space> (a popular choice, it seems), Alt+Shift still sticks! Which not only ruins using Alt+Shift+Tab, but also every other shortcut in all programs using Alt+Shift as modifiers, including IntelliJ (my main work tool). That sucks and is super-confusing.

Today I learned that this is caused by a setting that is stored outside of gnome's keybindings schema (org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings has the switch-input-source setting):

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options
['grp:alt_shift_toggle', 'grp_led:scroll']

Removing this setting "fixes" things (doing gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options), but why should I ever need to do so? Why can't simply Gnome clear this by default and use its own setting? This is so bad UX and almost seems like a glitch of some kind, but it seems as if it has been there for 4 years now, so in that case it should have been fixed. Is there any good reason for that behaviour?

Related

Ubuntu 21.10 distro upgraded from 21.04

oligofren
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  • What is our current Ubuntu version? – vanadium Mar 10 '22 at 16:51
  • This is an Ubuntu 21.10 distro upgraded from 21.04 – oligofren Mar 11 '22 at 01:01
  • Better add that info to the question. Actually, you nailed the issue, identified it correctly as a useability issue, so that is something to be taken up by the developpers. Nobody can give a more sensible answer than what you already indicated. – vanadium Mar 11 '22 at 07:10

1 Answers1

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Both the mechanisms you describe have their merits and complete each other, even if they don't always play well together.

However, I thought that bug #1762952 was fixed. Has something happened since then which makes the system define Alt+Shift by default again?

Gunnar Hjalmarsson
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  • I am not sure about the issue - if this is new or a regression case. I upgraded to 21.10 from 21.04 some weeks back, and ever since this has been an issue. – oligofren Mar 10 '22 at 14:20
  • Verified this is not a regresssion on new installs. I just did a clean install of 21.10 on another computer. The org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options option is empty, so this seems to be related to upgrades only. – oligofren Mar 10 '22 at 15:24
  • @oligofren: Thanks, that's useful info. I'll try to find the reason for it. – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Mar 10 '22 at 15:27
  • It might be that having two ways of switching have merits (like working for non-Gnome environments), but I still think that the desktop tooling could indicate to the user that another setting has been enabled that will affect input switching if the xkb settings has been enabled. That would avoid a lot of hair pulling :) – oligofren Mar 10 '22 at 15:27
  • I am not sure where to follow this up on a better channel, but I have found out that the xkb settings reappears after each reboot, meaning I always need to do this: gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options; to clear the ['grp:alt_shift_toggle', 'grp_led:scroll'] options that are being set. I am running Ubuntu inside VMWare. Do you think this could affect this somehow? Maybe VMWare Tools interferes? – oligofren Mar 22 '22 at 13:38
  • @oligofren: In that case you need to drop grp:alt_shift_toggle from /etc/default/keyboard. – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Mar 22 '22 at 13:48
  • That would indeed fix it, but would you have any idea how I can figure out which software has set these options? According to this Ubuntu man page the XKBOPTIONS is normally unset: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/en/man5/keyboard.5.html. I see the last change is Feb 8. – oligofren Mar 22 '22 at 15:33
  • @oligofren: I suppose it's the keyboard-configuration package. See the bug I mentioned in my answer. – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Mar 22 '22 at 16:19